A recent publication from Technology Review outlines research from John Hopkins University claiming that they have discovered a cost effective and practical malaria control strategy. Malaria is most prominent in Africa and kills millions of people every year, most of which are children. Anopheles female mosquitoes pass the parasite Plasmodium between human hosts rapidly, making control methods difficult to achieve. Researchers have proposed one possible method involving the release of genetically modified mosquitoes into the wild which are unable to transmit the parasite.
At John Hopkins, Jacobs-Lorena and his colleagues engineered malaria resistance in their mosquitoes by modifying the insects to produce the SM1 peptide which prevents the invasion of the mosquitoes gut by Plasmodium and in effect prevents the parasite’s development.
Computer generated models suggested that in order for the transmission of the disease to be stopped, the resistant mosquitoes must nearly entirely replace to wild population. Possible success with this method was then further tested via experiments where equal numbers of resistant and non-resistant mosquitoes were allowed to feed on mice infected with Plasmodium; from which the insects’ eggs were collected and then reared. After nine generations the experiment showed that the malaria resistant mosquitoes had greatly out competed their non-resistant counterparts with 70% of the progeny expressing the desired resistance, suggesting that perhaps being infected with the parasite may inhibit mosquitoes fertility making them less successful competitors against those that had been genetically modified to produce the SM1 peptide. If enough of the GM mosquitoes could be released into the wild and be able to out compete the non-resistant insects, future generations of not only mosquitoes but humans could not longer face the inhibitions of malaria.
Reference: Wu. C., 2007, Malaria-Resistant Mosquitoes, http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/18407/ [Viewed: 19 May 2009]
At John Hopkins, Jacobs-Lorena and his colleagues engineered malaria resistance in their mosquitoes by modifying the insects to produce the SM1 peptide which prevents the invasion of the mosquitoes gut by Plasmodium and in effect prevents the parasite’s development.
Computer generated models suggested that in order for the transmission of the disease to be stopped, the resistant mosquitoes must nearly entirely replace to wild population. Possible success with this method was then further tested via experiments where equal numbers of resistant and non-resistant mosquitoes were allowed to feed on mice infected with Plasmodium; from which the insects’ eggs were collected and then reared. After nine generations the experiment showed that the malaria resistant mosquitoes had greatly out competed their non-resistant counterparts with 70% of the progeny expressing the desired resistance, suggesting that perhaps being infected with the parasite may inhibit mosquitoes fertility making them less successful competitors against those that had been genetically modified to produce the SM1 peptide. If enough of the GM mosquitoes could be released into the wild and be able to out compete the non-resistant insects, future generations of not only mosquitoes but humans could not longer face the inhibitions of malaria.
Reference: Wu. C., 2007, Malaria-Resistant Mosquitoes, http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/18407/ [Viewed: 19 May 2009]
