We met with Prof. Scott O'Neill and his lab today.  We discussed what we are trying to do in Hawai'i with underdominance and possibilities with Wolbachia in mosquitoes in Hawai'i and Wolbachia strains from Hawaiian Drosophila species.  He is dean of the college and very busy but took time to talk with us and set up a tour and meetings with people working in his lab.  Their main focus is on modifying mosquitoes to block the spread and transmission of Dengue (the virus that causes Dengue fever) by using Wolbachia injections.  Long story short, certain Wolbachia (a type of symbiotic bacteria) strains can infect and be stably transmitted over generations in mosquitoes (and many other insect species).  If at a high enough starting frequency they increase in frequency in local populations and move toward 100% frequency.  Importantly, Wolbachia has also been shown to reduce the transmission of certain disease causing viruses and Plasmodium.  Originally they used a MelPop strain (from Drosophila melanogaster fruit flies) that reduced mosquito lifespan and virus transmission but it reduced fitness of the mosquito too much in the wild and would be lost.  They switched to a Mel strain (also from Drosophila melanogaster) that also (incompletely) blocks transmission and is able to become stably established in the wild.  They are conducting releases of Wolbachia infected mosquitoes in Australia and work in SE Asia.  We also discussed the regulatory aspects of their work both in Australia and internationally.  We got to see how they were raising and working with the mosquitoes, from cages to collecting and feeding to biosecurity setup (most of the work is at level 2 but they have a level 3 lab for the Dengue virus work).  We even got to see them do mosquito (Aedes aegypti) egg micro-injection and Jolene had a shot at arranging the eggs under a microscope and injecting them with a new experimental Wolbachia strain using a micromanipulator.  The people here were extremely helpful and friendly and we got to ask them questions for several hours---we were literally there all day and they took us out to lunch midday.  We have plenty of new pointers to help us with working with the mosquitoes in our lab.  The data they are getting back from the releases are impressive.  They are collecting mosquitoes from the release sites and areas around them weekly and plotting maps of the increase in allele frequency of the Wolbachia infected mosquitoes and the geographic spread from the release range.  On top of this you can see population fluctuations, drift, the effects of rainfall on the wild populations, etc.