We have no idea what happens when you start messing with mosquito genes. What happens to the ecosystems they live in? What happens to the mutated mosquitoes? We’ve seen Jurassic Park enough times to know that nature finds a way—especially the bad parts of nature. But believe it or not, the latest mosquito research is far from the only wacky malaria-fighting scheme to cross our inbox.
Researchers from Imperial College London and the University of Washington have discovered that they can disrupt the malaria parasite’s development by inserting a special gene into mosquitoes, which pass the malaria-fighting capability onto their offspring. This is just the beginning—in the future, scientists could splice in genes that allow mosquitoes to target animals instead of humans or even produce all-male offspring (only females spread malaria), according to the BBC. Continued…
