The New Nation - Internet Edition

SCIENTISTS have genetically modified mosquitoes in a cramped humid laboratory in London recently for combating malaria as the Associated Press news agency reported. Malaria kills nearly three million people worldwide every year, mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Faced with a losing battle against the killer disease, scientists are increasingly exploring new avenues that might have seemed far-fetched just a few years ago. Millions of bed-nets have been handed out, and villages across the African continent have been doused with insecticide. But those measures have not put a significant dent in malaria cases. After a string of failed initiatives, the United Nations announced a campaign to provide bed-net to anyone who needs them by 2010. Some scientists think creating mutant mosquitoes resistant to the disease might work better.

World Health Organisation experts say, 'the malaria burden is increasing'. Under such circumstances, the WHO would have to investigate whether genetically modified mosquitoes could make a difference. Some organisations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation found the work so promising that they have invested millions of dollars into genetic strategies to stop mosquitoes from transmitting diseases like malaria and dengue fever. Mosquitoes bred to be immune to malaria could break the disease's transmission cycle.

In 2005, it was found possible to create a genetically modified mosquito by inserting a gene that glowed fluorescent green in males. Among other possibilities, a team of researchers is now planning to create sterile male mosquitoes to mate with wild female mosquitoes, thus stunting population growth. The researchers are also trying to engineer a malaria-resistant mosquito. Last year, American researchers created mosquitoes resistant to a type of malaria that infects mice. Others are altering the DNA of the mosquitoes that spread dengue.