Team:Aix-Marseille/Implementation
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Implementations
The project, if it works, can become a solution for several problems, in France but also in the world. In France, it can prevent arboviral diseases carried by mosquitoes, it will give protection for the spread of a possible epidemic. It can avoid cases of autoctone contamination caused by mosquitoes like we saw in France in 2018. The project can also be reengineered to be applied all over the world. It can help to fight against arboviral diseases especially in countries where epidemics spread really quickly and cause a lot of human damage.
Sustainability of ARBO-BLOCK system
To implement the project directly in the real world, we need to set up some steps. Firstly, we have to be sure of the safety of the project. For that, we have to create in laboratory, some micro-environments to test the spread of the bacteria in a mosquito population, to test the capacity of killing the mosquito if it is infected and the most important thing, to know more about the transmission to descent and to evaluate the exhaust rate of the microorganism we used. We need to take a really important care for the safety of the project. We want the bacterium to stay within the tiger mosquito, and for that we need to work really hard on the biocontainment to avoid any possible escape within other species. Thanks to an interesting exchange with Dr. Walburger and Dr. Murat, specialized in biocontainment, we were able to have a better insight of what would be the most efficient and secure system to engineer our bacterium.
How to spread ARBO-BLOCK in the mosquito?
Then, assuming that ARBO-BLOCK is safe enough to be applied in real conditions, we need to think about a way to inject the bacteria in mosquitoes, to be directly exposed to the midgut tissues. The latter corresponds to the entry point of arboviruses as well as the key replication site (2). In addition to the scientific aspect, these techniques that we imagined took into account the different points discussed during the boot camp organized by the iGEM EPIC. In fact, our research did not go far enough to elaborate a complete business model but we were able to take into account the different steps of the creation of a complete business model to imagine the implementation of the project. Thus, taking into account the 9 elements of the business model canva (BMC) will facilitate us, in the future, the establishment of a solid business model to present to investors. Here are the techniques of diffusion that we have kept in view of these different elements:
Attractive Sugar Baits (ASB) are sweet solutions highly attractive for adult mosquitoes. For the ASB composition, we can either use glucose or honey dissolved in water, or a fruit cocktail mixed with beer to enhance attractiveness thanks to the CO2 present in it. If we wanted to go further to create a quasi-complete eco-friendly project, old or damaged fruits, thrown by growers, can be a promising solution to prepare the ASB. A field study revealed that mosquitoes do not differentiate sterile sugar baits to a sugar solution with bacteria (1), meaning that we will be able to fool mosquitoes with our engineered bacteria.
The question is now about the resistance of our bacteria, Asaia spp, within the artificial nectar. As the bacterium is part of the mosquito’s microbiota, during feeding through plants, the mosquito can contaminate the plant's nectar with its microbiome. Consequently, a bacterium as Asaia spp, is able to survive in natural plant’s nectar until another mosquito eats it.
Finally, the ideal container to hold the ASB, according to the study of Bilgo et al (2018), seems to be a clay pot but using the ASB directly in the Qista machine can be the best solution. Qista is made by a French start-up engineering boxes used to capture and kill mosquitoes. In order to attract them into the system, they are releasing CO2, highly attractive for adult mosquitoes. Within the Qista box, all the attracted mosquitoes are killed. We could use their system to easily attract mosquitoes in the box, in which they will find the ASB containing our bacterium.
However, no study has been carried out yet to try to disseminate a bacterium via ASB dispose directly in the environment.
The second technique, to disseminate our engineered bacteria and feed mosquitoes with it, would be a little less thoughtful, is to work in collaboration with EID, to spread a product which contains ARBO-BLOCK in the same way as they spread an insecticide.
ARBO-BLOCK acceptance
The last challenge we will have to meet, will be the public opinion on our innovation. We will be facing the problem of spreading GMOs directly in nature to avoid mosquito eradication, and this can cause several comprehension problems for a lot of people.
In a first step to introduce our project to the population, we have set up a form. We have published on different social media. Our form is constructed in 3 parts:
- Talk about yourself
- What do you know about arboviral diseases and mosquitoes as vectors
- What is your opinion on our solution?
Here, we will focus on the data gathered for the ARBO-BLOCK part.
First of all, the majority of people answering our form are impacted by mosquitoes invasion in their habitats.
In the form, we provide all the information concerning arboviruses (who are they, what kind of diseases are they able to transmit, what is the incidence,...) and tiger mosquito invasion both in France and worldwide. Obviously, a short description of our solution followed. With this knowledge, people would prefer to kill only the infected mosquitoes while they were anxious to know that GMOs could be released in the environment, as presented in the following figures.
However, when we finally introduce them to the concept of biocontainment, to help to understand how it is possible to engineer and create a safe GMO by using synthetic biology, the population shows less fear about our project and 90% of the population could accept that the GMO will be released in living areas (public garden, parks,...). Moreover, the Attractive Sugar Bait (ASB) used as a way to disseminate ARBO-BLOCK could be accepted by 93% of the population.
Finally, in developing our project, we had as target customers mainly governments, communities and GMOs but our survey showed us that the general public thought that this project should also be made available to individuals. In fact, the fact that 40.1% of the respondents think that our project should be accessible to individuals pushes us to develop dispersal devices adapted to individuals and others, on a larger scale, adapted to the institutions mentioned above.
In order to face people's opinions on our ARBO-BLOCK solution, we will have to set up a project on scientific vulgarization to educate people on how GMOs can be used efficiently and safely.
References
- Bilgo, E., et al. Fied assessment of potential sugar feeding stations for disseminating bacteria in a paratransgenic approach to control malaria. Malaria Journal. 2018;17:367
- Dong, S., Dimopoulos, G. Antiviral Compounds for Blocking Arboviral Transmission in Mosquitoes. Viruses. 2021;13:108