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Scientists Create 'Malaria-Proof' Mosquito


frostyj

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THURSDAY, July 15 (HealthDay News) -- In what might someday be a major advance against one of the world's most devastating diseases, researchers say they've created a mosquito that is unable to infect humans with malaria.

The University of Arizona team reported that their genetically altered mosquitoes are immune to the malaria-causing parasite, a single-cell organism called Plasmodium. The mosquitoes used in the research were Anopheles stephensi, a species that plays a major role in malaria transmission throughout the Indian subcontinent.

It may be possible someday to replace wild mosquitoes with lab-bred mosquitoes that can't infect humans with malaria, researchers said.

"If you want to effectively stop the spreading of the malaria parasite, you need mosquitoes that are no less than 100 percent resistant to it. If a single parasite slips through and infects a human, the whole approach will be doomed to fail," research leader and entomology professor Michael Riehle said in a university news release.

He and his colleagues tested their genetically-altered mosquitoes by feeding them malaria-infested blood. Not a single mosquito became infected with the malaria parasite.

"We were surprised at how well this works. We were just hoping to see some effect on the mosquitoes' growth rate, lifespan or their susceptibility to the parasite, but it was great to see that our construct blocked the infection process completely," Riehle said.

Each year, about 250 million people worldwide contract malaria and about one million die, most of them children.

The study appears July 15 in the journal PLoS Pathogens.

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Interesting stuff, hope it can work, science is truly amazing.

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Man, there's a huge alarm bell going off above a sign that says "law of unintended consequences"

hey great for science that they got this far, but really let's fix it from a vaccine/human immunity standpoint and not by releasing an organism that mother nature never intended into the environment.

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Every time I read a story like this, my hope that we'll survive long enough to colonize other planets dies a little bit. Maybe us being stuck on Earth and never spreading out is for the best.

Seriously? You're gonna genetically mutate an ancient insect that carries a disease that's been around hundreds of thousands of years and think no harm could come from this?

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Man, there's a huge alarm bell going off above a sign that says "law of unintended consequences"

hey great for science that they got this far, but really let's fix it from a vaccine/human immunity standpoint and not by releasing an organism that mother nature never intended into the environment.

What could go wrong? lol

Add me to the "no thanks" on the man made bugs. Especially when dealing with short life spans that can potentially evolve new changes quickly.

Every time I read a story like this, my hope that we'll survive long enough to colonize other planets dies a little bit. Maybe us being stuck on Earth and never spreading out is for the best.

Seriously? You're gonna genetically mutate an ancient insect that carries a disease that's been around hundreds of thousands of years and think no harm could come from this?

I agree, horrible idea.

Here's a thought on genetically engineered insects. Killer Bees.

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I really don't see why this would be a bad thing. Just about everything we eat, drink touch is not how mother nature intended.

Man made vaccine's and meds to boost our immune systems are not natural. How is this any different?

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Come on people. They are mosquitoes.

If there is evolutionary worse thing for humans than mosquitoes carrying maliara that is a benefit for mosquitoes, it is likely that mosquitoes would have already found it.

These mosquitoes won't be able to mutate into anything that current wild mosquitoes are able to mutate into.

There already are mosquitoes that don't carry malaria, and they didn't turn into mutant zombie causing mosquitoes.

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