Team:BGU Israel/Model
When we first started our project, we discussed releasing infected female mosquitoes. After consulting multiple ecologists and experts, we understood that it is not allowed to release female mosquitoes and decided to approach the idea of releasing male mosquitoes. We checked our theory by building a mathematical model. Our model gave us a way to confirm and predict the effect of a release of infected male mosquitoes on the population of female mosquitoes. The model was implemented in MATLABB, in a collaboration with the help of Technion Institute of Technology iGEM team, and allowed us to understand that a single-release model will not be sufficient. Therefore, we needed to change the method of releasing male mosquitoes from a single release to a release in intervals at a steady release rate. This model gave us an important insight of how to release our Trojan Mosquitoes in order to improve our project.
The figure below (Figure 1 in the attached PDF) shows a schematic presentation of the life cycle of infected and uninfected mosquitoes as we have used in the model.
