Early in the development of what is now Debug, our team began connecting with various organizations who specialize in the study and control of mosquitoes. The Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) stood out to us along with James Cook University (JCU). CSIRO is globally recognized for its expertise in the study of insects and control of invasive pests including mosquitoes, and JCU has world leading experience and facilities for understanding mosquito behaviour. As our project developed, our goals began to align with the knowledge and research infrastructure of CSIRO and its partners.

Today, I’m happy to announce that we have formed a research partnership with CSIRO and JCU. The focus of our work will be on field research and mosquito behaviour broadly and will be based primarily in northern Australia. Not only is it exciting for the Debug team to work with some of the most highly regarded research institutions in Australia, but it also brings back great memories for me personally: my first job at age 17 was as a research assistant at CSIRO, where I not only learned how to design and run experiments, but also how science with a mission could make an impact on the world.



Now, our three organizations have the shared goal of better understanding Aedes aegypti - the mosquito that spreads dengue, Zika, chikungunya and Yellow Fever. We’re hoping this knowledge will help us develop new strategies for fighting a species that is invasive to Australia and has a huge impact on human health globally. CSIRO’s knowledge of local communities and experience in the field in Australia is unparalleled, and we’re looking forward to working with the combined CSIRO and JCU teams to further develop and refine our tools and approach.

Check out CSIRO’s blog for more details, and stay tuned to our blog for updates on this research.

Nigel Snoad, Product Manager

Mosquitoes kill more people than every other animal combined. The diseases they spread sicken hundreds of millions of people each year. Towards the end of 2014, some of us at Google started exploring what we could do to help solve the mosquito problem. Serendipitously, around that same time, Verily was founded (initially as Google Life Sciences) with the objective of solving hard problems in science and biology with the ultimate goal of preventing disease on a global scale. It was a perfect match.

We talked with experts from around the world working on many different approaches. One stood out to us: the the sterile insect technique (SIT). The idea is to release sterile insects to mate with wild ones. No offspring result from these matings. So if enough sterile insects are released, they can reduce, or even locally eliminate, the wild population.

The sterile insect technique was first developed in the 1950s to combat a livestock pest called the New World screwworm. Here in California, SIT is used to control Mediterranean fruit fly. Unlike chemical pesticides, sterile insects are exquisitely precise. Insects only mate with others of their own species.

There have been many attempts over the years to use SIT to control mosquitoes. One problem is that the traditional method of using radiation to sterilize insects doesn’t work well on mosquitoes. The radiation dose necessary to sterilize mosquitoes makes them bad at mating. Recently, new techniques have been developed including one using a naturally-occurring bacteria called Wolbachia. This bacteria sterilizes mosquitoes, while preserving their ability to compete for mates in the wild.

Another problem is cost. For SIT to work, a lot of mosquitoes must be raised and released. A lot of male mosquitoes, specifically. Male and female mosquitoes feed on plant nectar, but only females bite and feed on blood. By releasing only males, which can’t bite, there aren’t more mosquitoes that can spread disease. Unfortunately, raising mosquitoes and separating the males from females is currently very labor intensive, making it too expensive to deploy at a large scale.

We decided to focus on the problem of reducing that cost with automation. We’re using Verily’s combination of data analytics, sensors, lab automation technology, and scientific expertise to solve specific issues around mass-production and sex-sorting of mosquitoes, and to enable efficient and targeted releases.

We also decided to focus on one particular mosquito: Aedes aegypti. While there are thousands of different species of mosquito, Aedes aegypti is the primary vector of dengue, Zika, chikungunya and yellow fever, and there aren’t good ways to control this mosquito.

The Debug Project is still early. We've built a team of mosquito biologists, software engineers and automation experts who are all passionate about solving the problem of mosquito borne diseases. We have promising prototypes of our automated rearing, sex separation, and release systems along with new designs for sensors and traps to measure mosquito populations.

We’re announcing Debug today because we’ll soon be ready to try these outside of our lab. We want to engage with local communities and government regulators to find the right places for field trials and ensure those trials are safe and effective.

To keep up on our team’s efforts, you can follow this blog or learn more at debugproject.com.

Linus Upson, VP of Engineering