Comments on: Engineering mosquito gut bacteria to fight malaria

By: tut

tut — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 15:29:12 +0000

Stonedogg: Yes it would be possible, but then you would have to get the mosquitoes to drink some of the remedy after every blood meal, whereas if the bacteria work it would be enough to get one batch into each mosquito before it begins to bite people.

By: stonedogg

stonedogg — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 15:15:12 +0000

Is it possible to simply dose those sugar-soaked cotton balls with the anti-Plasmodium molecules instead of the bacteria that make them? It seems this would not only solve the problem of trying to out-compete the mosquito-gut bacteria, but also allay the fears of those who are opposed to genetic modification.

By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 15:09:32 +0000

If there are already naturally occuring bacteria that block Plasmodium from mosquitoes there must be some factors that stop this bacteria occuring in all mosquitoes that are infected by Plasmodium. Understanding these dynamics might improve the success of any attempts to release modified bacteria that do the same thing. However George Dimopoulos makes a strong point that these bacteria will probably be outcompeted by pre-existing bacteria in the mosquito.

By: MichaelCook

MichaelCook — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 20:58:39 +0000

Pretty soon we will have bacteria we inject into a human, after a period of time the bacteria kill off the Plasmodium and then the injection of a compound induces the pre-programed death of the bacteria.

Ah! The future!