A genetically modified (GM) strain of malaria-resistant mosquito has been created that is better able to survive than disease-carrying insects. [It also glows in the dark..]
It gives new impetus to one strategy for controlling the disease: introduce the GM insects into wild populations in the hope that they will take over. The insect carries a gene that prevents infection by the malaria parasite.
Details of the work by a US team appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. The researchers caution that their studies are still at an early stage, and that it could be 10 years or more before engineered insects are released into the environment.
"What we did was a laboratory, proof-of-principle experiment; we're not anywhere close to releasing them into the wild right now," co-author Dr Jason Rasgon from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, told BBC News.
The approach exploits the fact that the health of infected mosquitoes is itself compromised by the parasite they spread. Insects that cannot be invaded by the parasite are therefore likely to be fitter and out-compete their disease-carrying counterparts.
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