THE first step has been taken towards altering mosquitoes so they can’t pass on malaria. But it’s not clear whether genetically modified mosquitoes could displace natural populations, or if we should even try to make this happen.
For decades, researchers have been trying to enhance the Anopheles mosquito’s resistance to the parasite that causes malaria, one of the world’s most prolific killers. In 2000, a technique for inserting genes into these mosquitoes was finally developed.
Now Marcelo Jacobs-Lorena of Case Western Reserve University in Ohio and his colleagues have managed to add a gene to Anopheles that codes for a…
