Verily Life Sciences has released the first batch of up to 20 million bacteria-infected mosquitoes in California as part of a project that aims to fight mosquito-borne Zika, dengue and chikungunya viruses.
For the Debug Fresno field study, researchers started to release sterile male mosquitoes treated with the bacterium Wolbachia into the wild. When these sterile males mate with the female mosquitoes, the resulting eggs will not likely hatch and thus potentially help in controlling the population of the disease-carrying insects.
