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Targeting Mosquitoes on their Home Turf: Debug heads to Australia
Tuesday, December 5, 2017
This November, the Debug team at Verily took an exciting next step with the launch of our first international field study,
Debug Innisfail
, as part of the collaboration we
formed
in October 2016 with the Australian
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
(CSIRO) and
James Cook University
(JCU).
For the Debug team at Verily, Innisfail and the greater Cassowary Coast region of Queensland, Australia is an appealing place to undertake our research to reduce the invasive
Aedes aegypti
mosquito. As a tropical climate, Far North Queensland (FNQ) is more representative of the areas where
Aedes aegypti
mosquitoes usually thrive. In fact, FNQ not only has an established population of
Aedes aegypti
but also has experienced outbreaks of dengue, and as we noted in our blog post last year, JCU and CSIRO have a great deal of mosquito research experience in this region. Additionally, Debug Innisfail represents an essential next step and challenge for our technology and research design: the ability to support partners at a distance as they use our technologies to help make and release mosquitoes.
For this field study, CSIRO is releasing sterile, male
Aedes aegypti
mosquitoes bred with
Wolbachia
into central Innisfail and several nearby communities through the region’s wet season. We will measure our success by monitoring changes in the number of biting, female mosquitoes in these release areas relative to similar neighborhoods nearby that will serve as controls. Though only minutes drive apart, the behavior of
Aedes aegypti
coupled with the separation of townships by fields of sugar-cane and river tributaries makes this a perfect place to see how far we can suppress the population of biting, female
Aedes aegypti
using our technology. This ecological isolation is because
Aedes aegypti
hover around human activity and travel on average
less than 100 meters
in the search for a mate, effectively making each township an ecological island, thus allowing us to measure our impact with more precision.
On Wednesday, November 15, the Debug Innisfail van (aka the “Mobile Mosquito Unit”, see photo) began work in Mourilyan, with CSIRO staff releasing mosquitoes produced at JCU near Cairns. As production ramps up, our partners will continue to expand the study to neighboring communities. Over the next week, releases will hopefully begin in two additional neighborhoods, South Johnston and Goondi Bend. Once Debug Innisfail is running at scale releases will occur in all study sites three times a week for up to 24 weeks.
Members of the research and field operations team, including members of CSIRO and James Cook University, on the first day of releases.
This month’s first releases are the culmination of over a year’s work in scientific and operational preparation. During this time, CSIRO and JCU, as well as researchers from the University of Queensland and the QIMR Berghofer Research Institute, reared
Wolbachia
Aedes aegypti
mosquitoes, studied the size and behavior of the
Aedes aegypti
mosquito population in and around Innisfail, and built strong links with the community members and local government, including the Cassowary Coast regional council whose support has been a critical element of our launch. The research our teams have done together over the last 12 months has not only benefited our project design, but has also resulted in our first
peer reviewed publication
which we hope will benefit the field of mosquito research overall.
CSIRO, JCU and ourselves all still have a huge amount to learn: how these non-biting males disperse and survive in the landscape, how well they find females in and around people’s houses, and how to operate our equipment a long way from our home base in California. We’re eager to see the impact these males can make on the biting, female population in these towns and take the next step in testing our technology in the field.
Nigel Snoad, Product Manager
Rhodamine B: A New Tool for Monitoring Mosquito Mating
Tuesday, November 21, 2017
We are very excited to announce the Debug Project’s first
publication
, which explores tracking mosquito movement and mating in the wild, a collaborative effort between Verily’s Debug team, The Australian
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization
(CSIRO) and
James Cook University
(JCU) in Australia. The study demonstrated that rhodamine B can be utilized to successfully perform mark-release-recapture (MRR) experiments and observe mating in the field.
Rhodamine B is a red dye that fluoresces when exposed to certain wavelengths of light. When fed to mosquitoes, it binds to internal proteins and stains them bright red. Rhodamine B staining is observable in adult mosquitoes by eye or by a microscope when looking at small tissues, which can be useful when studying mosquitoes in the wild. Mosquitoes can be tracked in the wild using an approach known as mark-release-recapture (MRR) where insects are marked (in our research, with rhodamine B), released into the wild, and then recaptured for marking examination. MRRs provide information on how far mosquitoes move across the landscape, as well as their lifespan, and can help us estimate the wild population size by comparing the ratio of marked recaptured individuals to unmarked insects.
A male Aedes aegypti mosquito fed on a mixture of rhodamine B and honey is stained visibly red (A) compared to males fed on honey alone
(B).
Traditional methods for MRR labeling rely on dusting mosquitoes with fluorescent powders, however, these powders can be difficult to detect and can impair a mosquito's ability to fly. Rhodamine B, on the other hand, can be easily visualized and evidence suggests it does not impact a mosquito’s activity or health.
Rhodamine B labeled males will seek out wild females. During mating males transfer their labelled semen to females, which can be detected by its red fluorescent properties.
Rhodamine B has another useful property: it can stain the male mosquito’s semen, which females store in dedicated capsules called spermathecae. After mating with a rhodamine B fed male, stained semen can be observed in the female’s spermatheca using a microscope. So not only can rhodamine B be used to track males in the wild, it can also be used to measure how successfully they mate with wild females.
Rhodamine B labeled sperm within the female spermathcal capsules after mating.
In our paper, we demonstrate that rhodamine B is a very effective label when mixed into the honey normally fed to male mosquitoes, with the stain visible up to three days after males are released. We performed several small scale MRR experiments in Cairns, Australia and were able to successfully detect mating between our lab reared males and wild females through rhodamine B fluorescence.
For future sterile male releases rhodamine B labeling will be a useful tool allowing us to easily and efficiently assess the dispersal, fitness and mating ability of the males we rear in our Debug factory. We are excited to continue this research and further demonstrate rhodamine B’s utility.
Sara Mitchell, Senior Scientist
Wrapping up Debug Fresno 2017
Monday, November 6, 2017
As we begin to wind down
Debug Fresno
operations for 2017, our team has been reflecting on the work of many individuals and groups that brought this study from concept to now near completion. From the development of unique technologies that scale the sterile insect technique, to testing our operations in a real-world environment and quickly adjusting to challenges, our team has achieved strong results from this season’s field study that we are proud to share today.
One of our primary goals at the outset of this study was to see a steep decline in the presence of female
Aedes aegypti
mosquitoes in the area where sterile male mosquitoes were released relative to similar control neighborhoods in Fresno County. Through the analysis of our trap and monitoring data, we found during the peak of the mosquito season there was an average 68% reduction in biting, female
Aedes aegypti
mosquitoes in our release area relative to other similar sites. These are promising results for our first field study, and we are looking forward to expanding to additional sites over more than one season to see what can be achieved.
For the Debug team at Verily, we also wanted to pressure test the first iteration of our technologies in a real-world environment and gather insights that could help us refine our approach. We gained valuable experience in all areas of the project. From larval production, to sorting male and female mosquitoes, to releasing sterile male mosquitoes, to trapping and monitoring, we continually improved our efficiency throughout the season. This experience is already being applied to future studies including Debug Innisfail, which will begin later this month in Australia.
As the mosquito season in Fresno County draws to a close, we want to thank the many people involved in this study, including our collaborators at
Consolidated Mosquito Abatement District
and
MosquitoMate
as well as the residents of Fresno County that have engaged with us in the Debug Fresno study. As our technology and research program continues to grow and improve, we hope to continue to partner with communities to learn how to reduce the threat of mosquito-borne diseases around the globe.
This post is also available on Verily's
blog
.
Jacob Crawford, Scientist and Yi Han, Product Manager
Debug Fresno, our first U.S. field study
Friday, July 14, 2017
Last October, we announced the
Debug Project
, an initiative at Verily to reduce the devastating global health impact that disease-carrying mosquitoes inflict on people around the world. Today, I’m happy to announce the launch of
Debug Fresno
, our first field study in the U.S. to test a potential mosquito control method using sterile insect technique in collaboration with
MosquitoMate
and Fresno County’s
Consolidated Mosquito Abatement District
(CMAD).
Debug Fresno will target the invasive
Aedes aegypti
mosquito, which can transmit diseases like Zika, dengue, and chikungunya.
Aedes aegypti
first appeared in the central valley of California in 2013, and since then has become pervasive in Fresno County. This study will be the largest U.S. release to-date of sterile male mosquitoes treated with
Wolbachia
, a naturally occurring bacterium, and will take place over a 20 week period in two neighborhoods each approximately 300 acres in size. When these sterile males mate with wild females the resulting eggs will not hatch. To measure our outcomes, we will compare the adult population density and egg hatching of
Aedes aegypti
in these targeted areas to two control neighborhoods. Over time, we hope to see a steep decline in the presence of
Aedes aegypti
in these communities.
In 2016, CMAD and MosquitoMate piloted the first-ever U.S. release of male
Aedes aegypti
mosquitoes with
Wolbachia
in Fresno County. Our 2017 collaboration represents a more than 25x increase in the release efforts, with a total of one million non-biting sterile male mosquitoes released weekly, made possible by the automated mass rearing and sex-sorting processes developed at Verily. Additionally, our software algorithms and on-the-ground release devices will allow us to distribute the sterile male mosquitoes in an even and targeted way throughout Fresno’s mosquito season. We believe that these advancements could have a meaningful impact on what is traditionally a very labor-intensive process and could reduce the number of biting
Aedes aegypti
in Fresno County.
Our "Mobile Mosquito Unit", the Debug Fresno van
For the Debug team at Verily, moving our work from the laboratory to the field is not only an important milestone for our group of biologists, engineers, and automation experts, but it’s also a critical step in bringing our long-term vision to reality. Field studies allow us to test our discoveries and technologies in challenging, real-world conditions and collect the necessary evidence to bring them to a broader scale. We hope to demonstrate success with Debug Fresno that will benefit the local communities working with us on this study and later other communities globally where Zika, dengue, and chikungunya are endemic. We are excited to take the first step in that journey today by bringing these technologies to the field.
Jacob Crawford, Scientist
Announcing our collaboration with Consolidated Mosquito Abatement District
Friday, March 24, 2017
Today, we’re delighted to announce that we have partnered with the Consolidated Mosquito Abatement District (CMAD) in Fresno County, California to better study the local infestation of invasive
Aedes aegypti
mosquitoes.
A regional government entity formed shortly after World War II, CMAD brings not only decades of experience in mosquito control, but also direct experience with innovative control techniques. We’re fortunate to be joined in this effort by
MosquitoMate
. They have previously
partnered
with CMAD to study the effect of
Wolbachia
mosquito releases.
We look forward to a fruitful collaboration against one of mankind's bitterest foes.
Yi Han, Product Manager
Announcing our partnership with MosquitoMate
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
We are happy to announce that we have entered into a partnership with
MosquitoMate
to test our automated mosquito rearing and release technologies. Founded in 2010 by University of Kentucky professor Stephen Dobson, MosquitoMate has extensive experience using male
Aedes
mosquitoes infected with
Wolbachia
as a mosquito control tool, making them a natural partner in our mission to scale the sterile insect technique (SIT) and locally eliminate invasive
Aedes aegypti
mosquitoes. We look forward to working together.
Brad White, Debug Science Lead
A research update from our colleagues at CSIRO
Thursday, January 12, 2017
We thought we’d start 2017 by sharing some results of the Queensland fieldwork being conducted by our Australian partners, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) and James Cook University (JCU). The original post "How far will a male mosquito travel to find a mate – and will he cross the road?" from December 22, 2016 is available
here
on the CSIRO mosquito project blog.
Nigel Snoad, Product Manager
How far will a male mosquito travel to find a mate – and will he cross the road?
By Helen Cook, CSIRO
Compare the pair: red dye was used to mark mosquitoes.
No, it’s not a joke. Pose this question to a member of our local Innisfail mosquito research project and they’ll give you a straight answer – On average less than 100 metres, and yes but most prefer not to. Yes, male mozzies
[Australian for mosquito]
do cross the road, or at least Mourilyan Road in East Innisfail where the project team has been studying the behaviour of the male Aedes aegypti mosquito; the female of the species transmits the dengue and Zika viruses.
Over the course of the five-week ‘Mark, Release Recapture’ (MRR) study 3000 male mosquitoes marked with a dye were released and then recaptured through a network of over 70 traps set in residents backyards, all to see how far the mosquitoes fly, how quickly they mate and how long they live. “The long-term goal of our research in Innisfail is to show that we can suppress and even remove the invasive Aedes aegypti mosquito from the urban landscape,” Project Manager Helen Murphy said. “Understanding the behaviour of the male mosquito is key to achieving this goal.”
“In 2017 we hope to carry out further studies and test new technologies being developed in the USA by project partner Verily [a Google affiliate]. These studies will involve releasing male mosquitoes that are effectively sterile,” Dr Murphy said. “If the sterile male mates with a wild female, the eggs she lays won’t hatch, thereby limiting the number in the next generation of Aedes aegypti. If we get our numbers right this would mean that the Aedes aegypti population would quickly die-off in the community.”
The CSIRO Innisfail mozzie team released over 3000 males mosquitos in East Innisfail, far north Queensland, where with residents support they had set over 70 traps – all to see how far the mozzies would go to find a mate.
Left to right: Ben Purcell, Caleb Anning, Dr Nigel Beebe (CSIRO Project Lead), Brendan Trewin (photo by team member Andrew Ford)
In the New Year the project team will expand their community engagement activities to share their plans with Innisfail residents, describing a small study to release sterile male mosquitoes in the first half of the year. If this is supported and successful, the project team will plan for a larger study towards the end of 2017.
“These initial studies in Innisfail will be the first of their kind carried out internationally as part of our recently launched
Debug project
,” Debug Product Manager Dr. Nigel Snoad said. “We are pleased with the initial results from the MRR and the high level of community support for our work, but we’re really just at the ‘preschool’ stage of what is a long-term world-wide project,” he said. “Working with CSIRO and James Cook University we expect to learn a lot by doing the next set of studies in 2017. We want to see the back of these bad bugs not only in Innisfail but across the world.”
For more information about the project, see
debugproject.com
or the CSIRO
project page
.
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