{"id":86579,"date":"2019-01-10T10:43:42","date_gmt":"2019-01-10T18:43:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/01\/scientists-could-soon-develop-mosquito-birth-control-to-prevent-diseases"},"modified":"2019-01-10T10:43:42","modified_gmt":"2019-01-10T18:43:42","slug":"scientists-could-soon-develop-mosquito-birth-control-to-prevent-diseases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/01\/scientists-could-soon-develop-mosquito-birth-control-to-prevent-diseases","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Could Soon Develop \u2018Mosquito Birth Control\u2019 to Prevent Diseases"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-could-soon-develop-mosquito-birth-control-to-prevent-diseases2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Mosquitoes are some of the deadliest creatures on Earth. Now, scientists have taken a major step toward developing a \u201cmosquito birth control\u201d drug that can help prevent diseases responsible for several million human deaths annually around the world.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/uanews.arizona.edu\/story\/fighting-human-disease-birth-control-mosquitoes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Researchers at the University of Arizona (UA)<\/a> discovered a protein in mosquitoes that is critical to the insects\u2019 process of producing viable eggs. When researchers selectively blocked the activity of the protein in female mosquitoes, the mosquitoes laid eggs with defective egg shells, leading to the death of the embryos inside.<\/p>\n<p>In a report <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.plos.org\/plosbiology\/article?id=10.1371\/journal.pbio.3000068\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">published in the open access journal <em>PLoS Biology<\/em><\/a> on Tuesday, the researchers said the protein \u2014 which they named Eggshell Organizing Factor 1, or EOF-1 \u2014 exists only in mosquitoes, so any drug developed to control mosquito populations would not affect other organisms, such as beneficial honey bees.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.geek.com\/news\/scientists-could-soon-develop-mosquito-birth-control-to-prevent-diseases-1769236\/\">https:\/\/www.geek.com\/news\/scientists-could-soon-develop-mosq...s-1769236\/<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mosquitoes are some of the deadliest creatures on Earth. Now, scientists have taken a major step toward developing a \u201cmosquito birth control\u201d drug that can help prevent diseases responsible for several million human deaths annually around the world. Researchers at the University of Arizona (UA) discovered a protein in mosquitoes that is critical to the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86579\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}