It Wasn’t Nothing Like the First Time?—?How I Became Obsessed With This Bug
I never thought I would develop an interest in this?insect
Swat!
Went Tom as he dunked on another mosquito.
His ceiling was littered with bugs, blood, and guts.
His room was a hive of mosquitoes. Despite his valiant attempts at killing them, they always mounted a resistance.
Buzzed resistance.
Tom is around 6 feet. And his ceiling wasn’t that high. He would swat some of them straight into his ceiling.
In short, we hated mosquitoes.
For him, he might still hate them.
For me, I have developed an interest in them. It is no longer hatred. It’s intrigue.
This has to do with two common natural processes.
So,
Let me take y’all back?man
As I do so well?—?J.?Cole
It started off so?innocent
It started with the process of symbiosis
There are hardly any contenders for the idea of symbiosis than Lynn Margulis . In her life, she defended the idea of symbiosis to the very end.
In particular, she stressed that symbiosis is a creative force. Unlike natural selection, it leads to the emergence of higher levels of complexity in organisms.
Symbiosis further develops forms of dynamic stability. This led to an increase in the scale of organisms , reaching sizes as large as the blue whale in the sea and elephants and dinosaurs on land.
I was fascinated.
This process got me daydreaming, man?what!
Symbiosis, we are made to believe, happens through natural means.
Two billion years ago, it led to the formation of eukaryotes, a new domain of life. You are here because of this process.
Basically, it might have been the best thing before and after sliced bread .
In the wild, symbiosis might be natural. If harnessed and utilized inside an enclosure, you might think otherwise. Unnatural.
However, the ability to convert a natural force into and package it inside a lab shows a deep understanding. It shows, the application of knowledge gathered through observation of nature’s works. Actionable knowledge.
One scientist has brought nature’s forces into the lab. Scott O’Neill is on a mission to eliminate Dengue Virus.
And he’s doing that through symbiosis.
How I discovered Scott O’Neill is a story in and of itself. Still, the story stems from symbiosis.
As time goes by, attraction gets?deeper
When I was getting into my final year of medical school, I knew I had sealed my fate. I was knee-deep in microbiology and evolutionary biology.
Every day, I had to dedicate several hours a day to reading an article or a book.
I had read Acquiring Genomes , by Lynn Margulis and her son, Dorian Sagan. For some time I wanted to get deeper into Microcosmos , and so I did. The vast world she introduced me to, page after page, was downright beautiful.
I developed a new-found passion for discovering symbiotic relationships everywhere. It was key in developing my theory of evolution.
But besides the theoretical understanding of the concept, I wanted to see how the process could be used in medicine. I, therefore, borrowed a leaf from the one bacterium we all knew?—?mitochondria.
Even though I was familiar with the bacteria through classes in medical microbiology, I later discovered we were taught scanty details. So I dug deeper.
After a few articles, I bumped into Wolbachia.
I
Love
Wolbachia
I said it.
No microbe interests me as much as this one. It has the willpower akin to that of Thanos and the brilliance of Tony Stark.
Wolbachia is a wonder bacteria .
And it has so many stories to tell about symbiosis.
As far as symbiosis is concerned, Wolbachia is a pro.
Oh, you a pro homie? Well I want you to show?me
It did.
Unashamedly.
In the medical field, Wolbachia sustains lymphatic filarial worms. These cause a lymphatic disease called filariasis . It can also cause blindness .
A simple way of eliminating these worms is by dosing individuals with everyday antibiotics. These would kill the bacteria.
Since they had established a genetic, symbiotic relationship with the worms, killing the bacteria consequently kills the worms.
领英推荐
I began to dabble with the idea of generating and unplugging symbiotic relationships. If these bacteria found a way of existing in greater than 50% of all known insects , why couldn’t we see how they can be leveraged to combat some of the vector bone diseases?
In particular, I thought malaria would be my primary interest.
The pro of symbiosis led me to the process of metamorphosis.
A bonafide pro will lead you from one stepping stone to?another
It was an unpredictable stepping stone.
Transformative.
Metamorphosis literally translates to a change of form.
Know how a butterfly transforms into a caterpillar ? That is the process of metamorphosis.
I had not yet explored the vastness of metamorphosis until I picked the works by Frank Ryan .
In the book, Metamorphosis , he tells the story of this mysterious physiological process. In insects, the mystery is fairly settled. In marine animals, not quite. This brought me back to the mosquito.
Part of the mosquito’s life cycle is in water. Its larval form needs water.
In a matter of days, it transforms into an all-terrain insect.
I then again began to dabble with the idea that Wolbachia could have a role in metamorphosis. It is one idea I entertained since the same bacteria are capable of sex change. It can convert male insects into female ones .
I told you. Insane microbe.
I wanna get something off my?mental
And it’s this.
This whole journey cut at the intersection of my interests.
Evolutionary biology, microbiology, and complexity.
These might be mouthfuls, so let me give a one-liner description of each.
Evolutionary biology?—?the study of the evolution of all known life forms.
Microbiology?—?the study of small and microscopic organisms such as mosquitoes, worms, and bacteria.
Complexity?—?the field concerning the relationships between components of a system whose behavior is more than the sum of the parts.
The two natural processes that concerned me were symbiosis and metamorphosis.
As far as evolutionary biology goes, metamorphosis and symbiosis are key stakeholders.
As for microbiology, the mosquito and Wolbachia are residents in this field.
For complexity, the relationship generated by these bacteria and insects, its effects, and the potential application is one that can be modeled through complexity theory.
My interest does not fit in any traditional academic discipline. But I don’t care.
I had found the sweet spot I was looking for.
Despite my newfound interest, I still had more issues bugging me.
I did not have a lab to investigate. I only had books, the internet, and my imagination.
That is how I bumped into Scott O’Neill. His story was encouraging.
I had thought of generating symbiotic relationships in a lab. Harnessing what nature does using these common symbiotic bacteria. Scott O’Neill, after decades of trying, had found a way to do this.
I am now more interested than ever in knowing its practical steps and implementing the same steps in eradicating malaria. I don’t know how it will be done, but I have a strong belief it is possible.
The only way to find out is to test it.
Will it be hard? Definitely! But there’s?hope
Bringing nature to a petri dish can be difficult.
The lab’s success rate in generating these symbiotic relationships is low, but all that is needed is one successful one. Just one, and nature does the rest.
The ability of Wolbachia to spread among its insect-infected hosts is astounding.
Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes prevent the spread of the Dengue virus. Dengue affects millions of people. Since it is a virus, you have to weather through it. Cold Turkey. No cure.
Scott O’Neill wants to put an end to this infectious disease.
It is why I think Wolbachia holds the potential for eradicating one of the leading causes of death in the world?—?malarial infections .
The impact of such an intervention is immense.
COVID-19 gave the world lessons. It showed the interconnectedness of various previously perceived distinct entities.
It turns out microbial interventions have social, economic, and political relevance .
Developing the ability to generate, switch, and offset symbiotic relationships from nature holds the kind of potential I would want to explore.
It took decades for Scott to start seeing results. I don’t know how long it might take me.
Like I said, I don’t care.
I have found my sweet spot.
And it’s in the mosquito.
But I hope the journey becomes gentle because…
And I ain’t never did this before no?—?J.?Cole