Coelomomyce Lab Report

With the failure to mass produce parasitic fungi belonging to the genus Coelomomyces in the lab by traditional means, a more abstract approach may be necessary. The economic and medical value of the mass production of mosquito parasites from the genus Coelomomyces would be nearly immeasurable, as the fungi could provide a way to safely control and eradicate certain species of mosquitos with less environmental impact when compared to current methods. Due to the spreading of many diseases mosquitos are a vector of, it is imperative that scientists find a way to grow these fungi inside of laboratories on a massive scale. While seemingly impossible, perhaps the best solution is to try to produce more of the fungi in each host mosquito. The hypothesis is that by genetically engineering the eggs and larva of the mosquito host to be of a significantly larger size, economically …show more content…
This potentially could be accomplished through insertion of a new growth hormone or by finding a gene that regulates pre-adult growth and deactivation it. Combined with the presence of Insect Growth Regulators, the larva could grow to a significantly larger size. Once successful, the hypothesis would be tested by comparing the output of fungi collected by the harvest of the engineered mosquitos to the predicted market value of the collected fungi. Success in this experiment is not determined by a successful harvest of the fungi, it is determined by the economic viability of this method of mass production of the fungi. While this may seem like a fruitless effort, there has been little progress in mass production of parasitic Coelomomyces fungi through traditional means and a non-traditional approach may be necessary. If nearly forty years of research into growing the Coelomomyces fungi outside of mosquitos has failed, why not try upscaling the only method that is currently guaranteed to