Science: Genetically Engineered Mosquitos!!

In 2006 ... Amazing!

I know people often get nervous about genetically modified anything but this is potentially really good news.

The idea in the research project is to prevent the spread of Dengue Fever Virus by stopping them from growing in the mosquito which passes the virus to people when the mosquitos bite.

The Anthony James lab at UC Irvine genetically engineered mosquitos that hampers the virus reproduction. The lab took advantage of RNAi (inhibitory RNA) technology (watch that biotech space) by placing into the genetic material of the mosquito small bits of sequence that codes for RNAi which in turn helps set in motion cellular processes that destroy the Dengue Fever Viral RNA.

Now, today ... this transgenic approach has shown some promise as a possible way to fight malaria. See the CNN.com report .

In this story, the mosquitos have been genetically engineered to make a protein that inhibits the replication of the parasite that live in mosquitos that cause malaria in mice. The parasite gets transferred into the mouse when the mosquitos bite. But if the mosquitos don't have much parasite growing in them then the liklihood of transfering the parasite during a bite goes down.

However, sometimes, genetically engineered organisms don't grow as well as normal ones. The report shows that these engineered mosquitos actually did better than the normal ones. Thus, perhaps in the future, genetically modified mosquitos would be released and they would dilute out the normal malaria causing mosquitos.