A major breakthrough has been recorded in the fight against malaria. For the first time ever, scientists have been able to successfully render a female mosquito infertile following the successful insertion of an infertility gene into Anopheles gambiae, the main vector for malaria. In their work published in Nature , the researchers described CRISPR-Cas9endonuclease constructs that function as gene drive systems in Anopheles gambiae. They identified three genes (AGAP005958, AGAP011377 and AGAP007280) that confer a recessive female-sterility phenotype upon disruption, and inserted into each locus CRISPR-Cas9 gene drive constructs designed to target and edit each gene.“This means that the gene drive element rapidly increases in frequency in a population such that a whole population can be transformed within a few generations,” says Tony Nolan, a molecular biologist at Imperial College London and one of the authors of the paper. The main methods used to control mosquito populations are draining standing water in which the insects lay eggs, pouring oil over water to kill aquatic mosquito larvae and using insecticides to spray affected areas and treat bed nets.
“These methods have significantly reduced the spread of malaria, but are costly, challenging to implement and face growing mosquito resistance,” says Nolan. “A control measure relying on genetic spread through a targeted population of malaria mosquitoes could complement these interventions without adding dramatically to health budgets.”
Source:HealthnewsNigeria
