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Review
. 2020 May 22;9(5):404.
doi: 10.3390/pathogens9050404.

A Review: Wolbachia-Based Population Replacement for Mosquito Control Shares Common Points with Genetically Modified Control Approaches

Pei-Shi Yen  1 , Anna-Bella Failloux  1
Affiliations
Review

A Review: Wolbachia-Based Population Replacement for Mosquito Control Shares Common Points with Genetically Modified Control Approaches

Pei-Shi Yen et al. Pathogens. .

Abstract

The growing expansion of mosquito vectors has made mosquito-borne arboviral diseases a global threat to public health, and the lack of licensed vaccines and treatments highlight the urgent need for efficient mosquito vector control. Compared to genetically modified control strategies, the intracellular bacterium Wolbachia, endowing a pathogen-blocking phenotype, is considered an environmentally friendly strategy to replace the target population for controlling arboviral diseases. However, the incomplete knowledge regarding the pathogen-blocking mechanism weakens the reliability of a Wolbachia-based population replacement strategy. Wolbachia infections are also vulnerable to environmental factors, temperature, and host diet, affecting their densities in mosquitoes and thus the virus-blocking phenotype. Here, we review the properties of the Wolbachia strategy as an approach to control mosquito populations in comparison with genetically modified control methods. Both strategies tend to limit arbovirus infections but increase the risk of selecting arbovirus escape mutants, rendering these strategies less reliable.

Keywords: Wolbachia; arbovirus; environmental factors; mosquito control; replacement strategy; viral adaptation.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Wolbachia-based mosquito control strategy can be viewed as a genetically modified control approach, population replacement, or population suppression. (a) The population replacement strategy is to release Wolbachia-infected female mosquitoes that, after mating with males (Wolbachia-infected or not), produce viable offspring, allowing a wide spread of Wolbachia in the field population that harbors less competent individuals, even as the total number of mosquitoes remains unchanged. (b) Population suppression aims to release Wolbachia-infected male mosquitoes that, after mating with wild females, do not produce viable offspring, thus reducing the total number of mosquitoes.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Viruses escaping from Wolbachia blocking activity. (a) After ingestion of an infectious blood meal (1), viruses enter into the midgut epithelial cells and replicate (2). Newly produced viruses are released into the hemocoel, infecting internal organs/tissues (3). After reaching the salivary glands (4), viruses replicate (5), and new viruses are excreted with saliva expectorated (6) by females when they bite. In the presence of Wolbachia in the midgut and salivary glands, escaping variants can be produced, leading mosquitoes to transmit viruses less sensitive to the pathogen-blocking effect. (b) Wolbachia blocking activity can be altered by environmental factors such as temperature. Mosquito larvae submitted to high temperatures produce adults with a lower density of Wolbachia. (c) Mosquito adults feeding on enriched diets (carbohydrates and amino acids) show reduced Wolbachia loads. Both (b) and (c) lead to a diminished blocking activity of Wolbachia as their bacterial densities are much lower.
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