Researchers work on malaria-proof mosquitoes

February 7, 2011

By hammersmith

[From the Sacramento Bee]

Hudson Sangree of the Bee reports on a celebrated project led by researchers at the University of Arizona and the University of California at Davis:

Open the door to a vault-like room at UC Davis and the cool sterility of a laboratory gives way to the sticky heat of the tropics, with thousands of mosquitoes buzzing in cages and feasting on blood.

Here in the university’s medical sciences complex, researchers are studying mosquitoes which they genetically altered to resist the parasite that causes malaria.

In other words, malaria-proof mosquitoes.

Now the goal is to make the altered mosquitoes hardier than native varieties, which they could someday supplant in nature throughout the world.

Read more at the source: “UC Davis researchers work to create malaria-proof mosquitoes