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Ateam of US scientists
from the Bloomberg School of Public Health and
the Malaria Research Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore,
Maryland developed genetically engineered mosquitoes with eyes that glow
in the dark, that do not carry malaria and have a better survival rate than
their wild counterparts. The study is published in
Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences dated March 19, 2007. The work
rekindles hope that transgenic mosquitoes could one day be used to wipe out
natural insects in the wild, helping to control the spread of malaria. Attempts to
create transgenic mosquitoes that are resistant to the Plasmodium parasite
were being made for quite sometime. But their ability to survive and spread
their genes were matters of speculation. In 2006, researchers found that
many mosquitoes are in fact naturally resistant to the parasite and the present
report suggests that such mosquitoes can survive longer because they produced more
eggs and were less likely to die.
See a previous report
The work was done with Plasmodium berghei, which infects mice, rather than
P. falciparum,
which causes malaria in humans and the designer mosquito was constructed from Anopheles stephensi and a synthetic gene for a peptide called
SM1. The genetically modified mosquitoes killed off Plasmodium berghei
that they ingested.
The research was funded by the National
Institutes of Health.
However, the authors cautioned that the
research so far is only a proof of principle and any field tests remain far
away. The ultimate target would be to manipulate the genome of A. gambiae, the
mosquito most responsible for malaria worldwide, to be resistant against one or
more of the four parasites that infect humans. Nonetheless, it’s a goal eagerly sought by
scientists in hope of developing a practical way of blocking the spread of
malaria.
But others worry that intentionally trying to
replace a natural population with a genetically altered one could have a whole
host of unintended consequences on the environment.
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