Jacobina

Instead, with approval from Brazilian authorities, Oxitec released nearly half a million GM mosquitoes every week into shared environments in Jacobina over a two-year period from 2013 to 2015.

The study tracked the effects of a field trial of GM Aedes aegypti mosquitoes created by the company Oxitec and released in Jacobina, Brazil, between 2013 and 2015.

These collaborators included biochemist Margareth Capurro and colleagues at the University of São Paulo in São Paulo, Brazil, who had an agreement with Oxitec to monitor the effects of the Jacobina release.

By the researchers’ estimates, somewhere from 5% to 60% of the mosquito population carried DNA from the Oxitec strain in its genome at different points in the study and in different Jacobina neighborhoods.

The company, now a subsidiary of U.S. biotech company Intrexon, has run several large trials in Brazil since the Jacobina release, including a test last year of a second-generation GM strain designed so that male offspring survive and pass on their genes.