The Latest Breaking News from Oxitec

A British company is producing mosquitoes that carry a ‘self-limiting’ gene that kills off female offspring, limiting the spread of diseases such as malaria and dengue fever

One expert says releasing a foreign strain into wild could increase risk of insecticide resistance

"All Californians should be relieved," said one Friends of the Earth project manager

VISALIA, Calif. — Bryan Ruiz moved his family into a newly built home in this Central Valley farming center seven months ago and almost immediately found they were under assault.

Many fear that the altered insects will hybridize with native mosquitos and produce a more aggressive fast-breeding strain.

LOS ANGELES — In the mosquito breeding rooms of British biotech company Oxitec, scientists line up fresh eggs, each the size of a grain of salt. Using microscopic needles, the white-coated researchers inject each egg with a dab of a proprietary synthetic DNA.

The genetically modified insects will be non-biting males engineered to only produce more male offspring

The future isn’t female, at least not for the invasive Aedes aegypti: the altered males are engineered to produce only male offspring