A genetic tweak could prevent mosquitoes from transmitting malaria
A genetic tweak could prevent mosquitoes from transmitting malaria
Tags: Gene drive, Genetic biocontrol, Malaria, MosquitoesJonathan Lambert, NPR, 2025.
Each year, 263 million people get malaria. But from the parasite’s perspective, infecting humans is harder than you might think, and requires completing an epic journey within the tiny body of a mosquito. First, the mosquito must suck the blood of an individual infected with malaria — bringing the Plasmodium parasite into the insect’s gut. Then the parasite must travel to the critter’s salivary glands, where it’s poised to be injected into the mosquito’s next victim via a bite. Now a team of researchers have found a way to interrupt this crucial journey. By using gene editing to make a tiny tweak to the mosquito’s genome — one that changes just a single amino acid — parasites were largely prevented from reaching their final destination. The change effectively rendered laboratory mosquitoes highly resistant to spreading malaria, researchers report Wednesday in Nature.
“The idea that you could change just one amino acid and not have the parasite transmitted is a pretty big deal,” says Fred Gould, an entomologist at North Carolina State University who wasn’t involved in the study. “It’s really exciting.” That tiny tweak could be spread through a whole mosquito population using a gene drive, a genetic technology that breaks the normal 50-50 rules of inheritance. Gene drives are sequences of DNA that can be inserted into the genome of an individual and cause a specific mutation or gene to be passed on to virtually all offspring, instead of just 50%.
