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Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Mosquitoes, a chance to fight malaria

Scientists believe they are close to transform DNA into wild mosquitoes to fight malaria.
In the lab, they made a few genes from spreading to most mosquito population in a few generations, according to an article in Nature.
If that can be made perfect for widespread gene, researchers hope to reduce the number of malaria cases.
World Health Organization estimates that malaria has caused nearly a million deaths in 2008.
Research groups have already created "mosquitoes resistant to malaria, using techniques such as introduction of genes to interrupt malaria parasite development. Research is faced with a challenge - the spread of these genes from genetically modified mosquitoes to the large number of wild insects from around the world.



Except when the mosquito gene offers an advantage, it is likely to disappear. Scientists at Imperial College London and University of Washington believe they have found a solution. They introduced the gene into the DNA of a species of mosquito. The gene produces an enzyme that cuts DNA into two. Following the procedure, the gene is copied into the DNA of the mosquito. Therefore, the sperm produced by a male mosquito is a carrier of the gene, and thus his followers are also carriers of the gene. In laboratory experiments, the gene was prevalent in half of the mosquitoes in 12 generations.
Professor Andrea Crisului science department of Imperial College London, said: "This is an exciting technological development, a development that I hope will pave the way for solutions to many global health problems. At first I was indeed quite skeptical, believing that perhaps will not work, but the results are so encouraging that I began to change my mind. "
He said the idea has been proved, in principle, and is currently working on getting other genes to spread in the same way. Crisanta also considered, it would be possible to insert a gene to cause the mosquito to target people rather than animals, to stop the growth of the parasite in insects or to produce male offspring that do not transmit malaria.
Janet Hemingway, a professor at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medici, said that the book represents an "exciting discovery." It warned that the technique has given rise to social problems related to the acceptability of using GM technology.
Dr. Yeya Toure, the World Health Organization, said: "This discovery is very important to introduce a foreign gene into a mosquito population. However, given the fact that the technique succeeded in laboratory experiments, is no longer required to perform other studies before its use as a genetic control strategy. "

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