Oxitec biologist releases genetically modified mosquitoes in Piracicaba, Brazil in 2016 [credit: Getty Images]

In­trex­on unit push­es back against claims its GM mos­qui­toes are mak­ing dis­ease-friend­ly mu­tants

When the hys­te­ria of Zi­ka trans­mis­sion sprang in­to the Amer­i­can zeit­geist a few years ago, UK-based Ox­itec was al­ready field-test­ing its male Aedes ae­gyp­ti mos­qui­to, craft­ed to pos­sess a gene en­gi­neered to oblit­er­ate its prog­e­ny long be­fore mat­u­ra­tion.

But when a group of in­de­pen­dent sci­en­tists eval­u­at­ed the im­pact of the re­lease of these ge­net­i­cal­ly-mod­i­fied mos­qui­toes in a tri­al con­duct­ed by Ox­itec in Brazil be­tween 2013 and 2015, they found that some of the off­spring had man­aged to sur­vive — prompt­ing them to spec­u­late what im­pact the sur­vivors could have on dis­ease trans­mis­sion and/or in­sec­ti­cide re­sis­tance.

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