Ban The Bite is dedicated to eliminating the need for mosquitoes to bite. Female mosquitoes can survive on the sugar from plant secretions, such as nectar and sap, but need some essential amino acids from blood for egg production. Male mosquitoes feed exclusively on plant secretions. There are other insects, such as aphids, that have symbiotic bacteria that convert non-essential amino acids in their diet to essential amino acids. Because of the non-essential amino acids in plant secretion meals, it may be possible to create a symbiont for mosquitoes that will also perform the amino acid synthesis. Thus the female will be able to reproduce without the need for blood and not be able to spread diseases like malaria, yellow fever, West Nile, and dengue.
The next step is to eliminate the desire and/or ability to obtain a blood meal. There are several options. One is to take advantage of a hormone, called AaeHP1 that is found in Aedes aegypti, which turns off host seeking behavior. This hormone is secreted after a large enough blood meal so the mosquito will stop trying to gather more blood and instead will digest the blood meal. It is assumed that all blood feeding mosquitoes have a similar hormone although they haven’t all been identified yet. Other options are to turn off the ability to smell a certain component of human sweat that attracts the mosquito, or even have the female develop male mouthparts so she is physically incapable of biting.
Wolbachia, a maternally inherited, intracellular bacterium is a potential candidate for carrying the genes necessary to perform these modifications. Due to some reproductive modifications in its host, the Wolbachia can spread very quickly through a population, which is ideal for our purposes.