Do you be intimate which animal kills the most humans every year ? It ’s not snake in the grass , Scorpio , or any of those obvious choices . It ’s not something semi - unexpected like hippos – and no , it ’s not our fellow humans either , so halt look so smug .

It ’s mosquitoes .

Not straight off : they are n’t wing around with little syringes full of poisonous substance that they shoot into their unassuming victims or anything – waitress , no , that ’s actually pretty much on the nose what they do . Mosquitoes ’ unvanquishable kill enumeration come down to their habit of communicate bacteria , viruses , and even parasites into our trunk when they come for a sip at the ol’ blood spread .

That ’s why , since sentence immemorial , people have been chase afool - proof waytooutwit the little cuss . Now , aftera class - long experimentin the Florida Keys , researchers say they have some positive results from one of the most cutting - sharpness technique out there : inherited limiting .

“ We had quite a few quite a number of key execution final result that we were hoping to hit , ” said Nathan Rose , head of regulatory affairs at Oxitec , the UK - establish biotechnology firm behind the experiment , during a webinar on the results .

“ We were able-bodied to polish off all of those in this test , ” he added .

Thisisn’t the firstexperiment get at reducing the world ’s mosquito job on the genetic level – it ’s not even the first experimentfrom Oxitecto attempt it . Each method is slightly unlike , though , and this latest approach saw researchers direct maleAedes aegyptimosquitoes to carry a gene that is deadly to female offspring . These Oxitec - grow males are then release into the Florida Keys to go find a wild female to pair with ( which is , to be fair , awell - give traditionin Florida during Spring . )

“ [ A ] really important part of this project was expect at effective union by manly mosquitoes that we released , and also what happened to the distaff young of these matings , ” Rose explained . “ And here we confirmed that the larvicidal efficacy of our mosquitoes was 100 percentage throughout the project . ”

Throughout the experimentation , Oxitec research worker carefully harvest more than 22,000 mosquito ball from sand trap and brought them back to the lab . There , they screened the resulting larvae for fluorescence – the genetic adjustment had a secondary event that made moved mozzies shine . Any that lit up , the scientists get over through to adulthood .

“ We saw that every exclusive fluorescent female larva pop off before it reached maturity , ” Rose said . “ This is what we expected , and it ’s what we ’ve see in the bailiwick in Brazil and in the lab as well . ”

While these issue are certainly promise , we ’re still very far from glorify a newfangled miracle artillery against the world ’s mosquitoes . For one thing , the genetic variety is n’t permanent – the experimentation unwrap that mosquito population no longer carry the deadly factor after two or three calendar month ( around three generations of mosquito offspring . )

What ’s more , the experimentation ca n’t recite us how well this proficiency can suppress mosquito populations or inhibit the spread of the deadly disease they transfer . It ’s not a limitation of the subject field – the research worker never intended for the experiment to answer those questions .

“ They ’re not go to be able to do a run to show that it actually has a public - health impingement , ” Thomas Scott , an entomologist at the University of California , Davis , toldNature . “ There ’s not enoughAedes - transmit viral infection in the Florida Keys . ”

Nevertheless , the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District ( FKMCD ) , a local anti - mosquito chemical group , has high hope for the young technology .

“ Aedes aegypti [ … ] makes up about four percent of our full mosquito collections , but is actually responsible for a hundred percent of the diseases we ’ve see here of late [ in the Florida Keys ] , ” FKMCD executive theater director Andrea Leal explained during the webinar .

“ It ’s very difficult [ … ] to check this mosquito , ” she continue . “ There is no silvern bullet train [ … ] you know , we ’re just really hopeful that we [ find ] something we can desegregate with the respite of our control method . ”