Health

Genetically Altered Mosquitoes fight against Dengue and Malaria

by Karenke4 | January 2, 2009 at 10:19 am

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Scientists in Australia are finding new ways to fight deadly mosquito bites through genetic engineering. While they have been attempting to modify mosquitoes to become resistant to dengue and malaria for years, recently they've found a new approach. Simply shorten the mosquitoes' life.

Older mosquitoes are more dangerous because there is an incubation period that is required before the disease carrier can infect humans. Scientists have successfully infected mosquitoes with a fruit fly parasite which cuts their lifespan in half. Young mosquitoes will not have lived long enough for the diseases to mature in their bodies, and therefore won't have the chance to transmit the disease.

Voila: Mosquitoes born with the parasite lived only 21 days — even in cozy lab conditions — compared to 50 days for regular mosquitoes, University of Queensland biologist Scott O'Neill reported in the journal Science.

Mosquitoes tend to die sooner in the wild than in a lab. So if the parasite could spread widely enough among these mosquitoes, it "may provide an inexpensive approach to dengue control," O'Neill concluded.

Dengue fever causes massive headaches, muscle and joint aches, rash and vomiting or diarrhea. It can lead to Dengue Shock Syndrome, which can be fatal. Dengue affects tropical and subtropical regions around the globe is caused by day feeding mosquitoes, often breeding around standing bodies of water. Children are very highly susceptible to the disease.

Similarly, malaria, an even more widespread and fatal disease will benefit from this research which uses natural means of mosquito control versus the more expensive, and environmentally harmful alternative of mass poisoning.

It's possible that dengue viruses could evolve to incubate more rapidly if their mosquito hosts die younger, they noted, although that likely would be less of a problem than today's insecticide resistance.

Still, "determining whether it can remove enough infectious mosquitoes to be useful will be a challenge," the duo cautioned.

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Paschen

at 07:17 on January 4th, 2009

I do really not like the sound of this we should not GM any thing nor play carelessly with nature, it may back fire even though it sounds good for now, just remember the Killer bee we created them by trying to increase the performance of the honey bee. And Rundup ready Soy and Corn is now causing great problem with weeds becoming resistant as well. Exactly the opposite of what we wanted.

harringtola

at 12:15 on January 6th, 2009

Exciting and scary at the same time. I like the idea of using the normal transmitter to counteract the process but, like Paschen, I am fearful of fooling with mother nature.