Nature goes inside the world’s largest ‘mosquito factory’ — here’s the buzz

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1:22This is a podcast extra from nature. This time, our life sciences reporter, Mariana Lanaro, investigated an unusual approach to tackling mosquito-borne diseases, producing more mosquitoes in the biggest mosquito factory in the world, in her home of Brazil. Mariana spoke about the factory and how it might help tackle deadly diseases with reporter Adam Levy. Here's Adam.

1:49Mariana Lenharo: So as a Brazilian person, can you tell me a little bit about your personal relationship with mosquitoes? Yeah, so in Brazil, mosquitoes are everywhere and we suffer a lot with mosquito-borne diseases like dengue. I think nearly all of my family members have gotten dengue at one point and we feel very strongly against mosquitoes. Now, I'm from the UK. I currently live in Germany. We still have mosquitoes and they're really annoying, but that's kind of the extent of my experience with mosquitoes. But in countries like Brazil, mosquitoes are actually a really serious public health concern, right?

2:31Yeah, that's correct. So more than 6 million people got thing in Brazil last year, and there were more than 6 ,000 deaths. There's also chikungunya and there's also Zika. So it's a big burden.

2:49Mariana Lenharo: Now this brings us to a mosquito factory that you visited in Brazil. Now a mosquito factory is exactly what it sounds like. It produces mosquitoes and I want to hear all about it in just a second. But first, can you explain what the idea behind this even is? Why would you want to produce mosquitoes in a factory? Yeah, so it may sound counterintuitive to produce more mosquitoes to fight mosquito-borne diseases. But these mosquitoes, they are modified. They have a bacterium in them called Wolbachia. This bacteria blocks the transmission of viruses like dengue, Zika and Chikungunya. So the idea is that if you release these mosquitoes in cities that are affected by these diseases, they will breed with the local mosquitoes and spread this bacteria.

3:46And so fewer mosquitoes will be able to transmit these diseases. The number of Dengue, Zika and Chikungunya will drop once these modified mosquitoes are established in the local population.

4:00Mariana Lenharo: So that's the idea behind a factory like this. But can you tell me a little bit about your visit to the factory? When I found out that they were going to build the biggest mosquito factory in the world in Brazil, I wanted to check that out. And it looks very much like any other like biotech facility. It's very high tech. When you walk into this factory, there are several rooms that are dedicated to different life cycles of the mosquitoes. So there's one large room where they keep the larvae. There's one for the eggs. And the most impressive room in the whole facility is this large room where they keep the adult mosquitoes.

4:48and so you walk into this room and there are 66 human-sized cages of mosquitoes and they are filled with mosquitoes so I was told that there were 10 million mosquitoes in that room.

5:03Mariana Lenharo: And how did it actually feel for you to be in this room with this vast number of mosquitoes? Yeah so the first impression that I had is that I was surprised that I couldn't hear that typical buzzing sound from the mosquitoes and I asked about this and I was told that the Aedes aegypti mosquito is actually silent so I could only hear like a faint sound of the wings flapping but when I looked into the the cages I will tell you that it felt a little bit scary to think oh my gosh, can they maybe break free from this cage? But yeah, that wasn't a risk. But yeah, it's really weird to think that you're surrounded by 10 million mosquitoes.

5:55Mariana Lenharo: Now, speaking of the scale, when you were actually there at the factory, you spoke with a couple of the members of the team. And here's production manager Antonio Brandao, putting the scale of the factory into a little bit of context. But it's a whole new world. We've never worked with this many mosquitoes to produce this many eggs. So, yeah, it's pretty challenging. Now, of course, a major consideration when we're talking about mosquitoes is blood, a major component of the female mosquitoes diet. Here's the factory's CEO, Luciano Moreira. At full capacity, we'll be using 70, 70 litres of blood per week, which is a lot.

6:42Mariana Lenharo: So back to you, Mariana, that is clearly a lot of blood. Where is it all coming from? Smaller mosquito factories often rely on partnerships with blood banks. So they send blood that is for example near the expiration date but this one requires a lot of blood as we heard so they use blood from horses but the mosquitoes still prefer human blood so they have to find the right alchemy to make the blood appetizing for for the mosquitoes so they mix a little bit of human blood into the horse blood to get the mosquitoes used to the flavor. Now, can you tell me what the end result of this is? They're not actually just petting a bunch of mosquitoes in a box and then selling that.

7:36Yeah, so the final product that comes out of the factory is actually the mosquito eggs. The way they package those eggs is that they put the eggs inside of a capsule, a small capsule, just like any other medicine capsule. So they put around 500 mosquito eggs inside a capsule, along with some fish food that is actually used to feed the larvae. These capsules are sent to the locations where the mosquitoes will be released. When the factory is working at full capacity, they will produce up to 100 million eggs a week and up to 5 billion eggs every year. So it's a lot of eggs.

8:22Mariana Lenharo: And all this effort is to try and reduce the incidence of these mosquito-borne diseases we were talking about earlier. What do we know about whether this actually works out there in the world? There has been many studies to look into this in different countries So I'll give this example from Brazil. They released these mosquitoes in certain neighborhoods. And where they released the mosquitoes, the number of dengue cases dropped by 69 % compared to the areas that did not receive the modified mosquitoes. So the impact is really tangible. Now, not everyone is actually happy about this, though. Antonio explains some of the reactions this work gets from the public.

9:11Yeah, they first got surprised or some scared, like, why are you guys releasing more mosquitoes? We have enough mosquitoes. But when people understand the goal of the project, they say, OK, it's a good reason. And that's why we are mosquitoes.

9:25Mariana Lenharo: And actually, Mariana, despite successes, there have been some quite negative responses, too, to this work, right? Yeah, that's correct. So when they officially launched the factory, there were some rumors online, people saying that the mosquitoes were actually bringing diseases rather than fighting diseases. And there have been episodes of people posting about the factory and even threatening to set the factory on fire. and the people there at the team are really working with the communities to inform them about what this is all about so that the community that receives the mosquitoes can really trust that this is a scientifically proven method to reduce diseases.

10:18Mariana Lenharo: What's the outlook then for this approach to tackle mosquito-borne diseases in Brazil? Is it taking off? Yeah, so the Brazilian Minister of Health recently established the Obaquia mosquitoes as a public health strategy to fight dengue. So Brazil is already using other strategies. For example, there's already a dengue vaccine that the government is providing for certain groups of people with higher risk. And there's ongoing educational campaigns to explain to the population how to prevent breeding sites. But they recently incorporated the modified mosquitoes as part of that larger fight against mosquito-borne diseases.

11:10And it's supposed to become a nationwide effort. I think the world will be watching the results from Brazil, but experts always remind people that this is not a magic bullet that will solve all the problems, but probably it will take all the efforts to really solve the issue.

11:35that was reporter mariana lanaro speaking with adam levy for more on that story check out the show notes for a link to mariana's news article and we'll also put a link to a video we've been making about mariana's trip to the factory it's worth having a look to see how these mosquitoes are bred until next time thanks for listening

12:19Hannah, I just Venmo'd you for dinner. Obsessed. I'm spending it right now in the lip gloss that's been sitting in my cart. What do you mean spending it right now? You can instantly spend your balance with the Venmo debit card or when you pay with Venmo at checkout. Stop. Say more. More exactly. The more you do with Venmo, the more you get. Like earning up to 5 % cash back with Venmo Stash. Get the Venmo debit card or checkout online. Venmo Stash bundle terms and exclusions apply. Max$100 per month. See terms at venmo.me slash stashterms. Venmo checkout not available at all merchants. The Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank N.A.

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