Genetically Modified Mosquitoes Could Help Fight Malaria

Researchers from Imperial College London discovered a way to genetically modify mosquitoes to produce sperm that only creates male mosquitoes, and they believe this is a step toward fighting and eliminating malaria.

Malaria is a mosquito-borne illness that is most prevalent in Africa, in which 90% of the cases worldwide are documented. In 2010, 219 million cases of the disease were reported, resulting in 660,000 deaths. Those infected suffer from a fever, chills, and flu-like illness.

The Anopheles gambiae are the primary mosquito species that transmit malaria. The Imperial College London researchers were able to distort the sex ratio of this mosquito species so females would not longer be produced. They believe this could be an effective way to slowly eradicate the deadly disease.

"For the very first time, we have been able to inhibit the production of female offspring in the laboratory and this provides a new means to eliminate the disease," said Andrea Crisanti, who led the research at Imperial's department of life sciences, in this Reuters news article.

"Once modified mosquitoes are introduced, males will start to produce mainly sons, and their sons will do the same, so essentially the mosquitoes carry out the work for us," said Nikolai Windbichler, who co-led the research.

The study, "A Synthetic Sex Ratio Distortion System for the Control of the Human Malaria Mosquito," was published on Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications. They conducted experiments over the course of six years, eventually discovering that a DNA-cutting enzyme called I-PpoI was able to remove the female-producing X chromosome during the production of sperm.

The scientists put the genetically modified mosquitoes into five separate cages with wild-type mosquito populations, and in four of the five cages, the genetically modified mosquitoes eliminated the entire population within six generations because of the absence of females.

If this strategy can prove effective in the wild, we will likely see fewer reports from the World Health Organization estimating that 3-4 billion are at risk for malaria.