Word: mosquito
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Jacobs-Lorena and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins University have taken a different approach to combating malaria. They have engineered a mosquito that produces an extra protein in its gut, which blocks the malarial parasite from infecting it. The team recently discovered unexpectedly that one of their engineered mosquito strains is “fitter” than ordinary mosquitoes. Once you infect it with a certain strain of mouse-borne malaria parasite, it lives longer and produces more offspring than infected wild-type mosquitoes. Place equal numbers of the two types of mosquitoes into the same cage...
What would happen if these newfangled mosquitoes were released into the wild? The hope is that the modified mosquitoes would out-compete the existing ones, and the bulk of the mosquito population would be malaria resistant, thus preventing new human malaria infections. It’s not beyond the realm of possibilities that the engineered mosquitoes could entirely replace the wild ones. This solution would be simple and inexpensive. It would not rely on vaccinating entire human populations nor spraying pesticides to control mosquitoes. It would use mosquitoes to fight mosquitoes...
...reality, the technology isn’t nearly ready to take flight. The mosquito species that Jacobs-Lorena used is not the most harmful of mosquito species and the parasite used does not infect humans. Furthermore, the modified mosquitoes only have an evolutionary advantage over infected mosquitoes, and in the wild only a small fraction of mosquitoes are infected with malaria...
...Tangerang, a Jakarta suburb where women out alone after sunset have been arrested as prostitutes even though they were just commuting home from work. So, too, the mayor of Padang city in western Sumatra, who credited mandatory head-to-ankle attire for female students with a reduction in mosquito-borne dengue fever. "If you have people from non-Islamic parties pushing for Shari'a, then it doesn't matter how popular the Islamic parties are," says Hamid Basyaib, program director of the moderate Muslim Freedom Institute in Jakarta. "The radicals have already...
Malaria also helps create a poverty trap with special ferocity in Africa. By a quirk of ecological fate, Africa has the world's heaviest toll of this disease, the result of its tropical climate, its specific types of mosquitoes and its limitless mosquito-breeding sites. Children are struck down in unmatched numbers. And Africa's disease toll from malaria may be even higher than previously recognized. Recent research has found that malaria infection increases the likelihood that an HIV-infected individual will transmit the AIDS virus to others. Many millions are also infected simultaneously with malaria and worm infections, multiplying...