THANKS to new developments in genetic engineering, a new breed of genetically modified mosquitoes (GMMs) may be able to save thousands of lives from one of the world’s most deadly diseases—malaria.
Malaria, a disease common in the tropics, infects an estimated 500 million people worldwide and kills around 2.7 million each year, according to the 2005 World Malaria Report by the World Health Organization.
Last year, scientists from the Malaria Research Institute of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland discovered a way to control the spread of malaria by adding a new gene that causes the mosquitoes to become resistant to malaria-causing Plasmodium parasites.
According to Associate Professor Gil Cauyan, a parasitologist from the Biology Department of the College of Science, GMMs are able to oppose reproduction of Plasmodia parasites because zygote formation is inhibited.
“If the mosquito is genetically modified with the new gene, it will prevent the establishment of malarial parasites in its body. The egg and the sperm will not fuse to form a zygote and there will be no future generations of malarial parasites,” Cauyan told the Varsitarian.
Clean and glowing
The study, published in the US Journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last March, discovered that in a population of both GMMs and malaria-carrying mosquitoes, the former slowly dominated and laid more eggs.
The scientists released 1,200 GMMs into a container with the same amount of mosquitoes bred naturally. Both were allowed to feed on the blood of a group of mice infected with malaria. After nine generations, the GMMs comprised already 70 per cent of the population.
To distinguish the GMMs from the rest of the mosquitoes, scientists added a green fluorescent protein to the GMMs, causing their eyes to glow green under ultraviolet light.
The scientists claim that, despite the success of their experiments, they are still far from releasing the GMMs into nature because their studies are still at an early stage.
Meanwhile, there are also numerous studies being conducted in the country regarding malaria. In 2005, scientists from the Department of Parasitology of the University of the Philippines used remote sensors and geographic information system to determine environmental factors that sustain the mosquito and snail populations responsible for spreading malaria and schistosomiasis.
According to Cauyan, the UP Institute of Public Health is also conducting a study that uses DNA probing to analyze why some anti-malarial drugs are becoming ineffective in the treatment of the disease.
With these and other genetic innovations, who knows, mosquitoes soon won’t be able to carry infectious diseases like malaria and dengue.
