Credit: SPL/The Economist
After 5,000 years, malaria remains a major disease of humanity. Every minute, a child dies from malaria & it remains a major cause of poverty worldwide, due to effects such as worker productivity, absenteeism, premature mortality & medical costs.
Now there is hope that a genetic approach may lead to control of Anopheles gambiae, a major species of the mosquito which carries the malaria parasite.
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21604092-how-get-mosquitoes-breed-themselves-death-x-marks-spot
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Other references:
http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/malaria/en/
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v415/n6872/full/415680a.html / mosquito kill disease control controlling malaria insecticides eliminate malaria selective selectively killing transmits parasite mosquitoes genus Anopheles Nikolai Windbichler Andrea Crisanti Imperial College London paper Nature Communications females break the chain of transmission drink blood pass the parasite on longer term because females population cannot reproduce researchers’ trick engineer mosquitoes gene protein called homing endonuclease genetic parasite cut particular sequences of DNA damages chromosome destroy destroys chromosome copy copies endonuclease gene repair site homing parasitism homing endonuclease species of slime mould X chromosome destroying chromosome completely humans X chromosomes Y males unfertilised egg sperm cell transplanting endonuclease gene genomes male mosquitoes spermatogenesis researchers population caged populations experimented in the wild will break the chain of transmission natural selection parasite has gone reintroduced disruption to the local ecology /
