Scientific Discoveries this week: 4-25-11
London, United Kingdom – Mosquitoes that are unable to transmit the deadly malaria virus have been successfully developed by researchers, but difficulties in making the new species catch on has driven a group of scientists at the Imperial College of London to work on developing genes that will allow them to spread in the wild. The new mosquitoes have been around for many years, but until recently they were unable to survive in the larger world population. And with hundreds of billions of wild mosquitoes in the world, even a million of these so-called ”disease-proof” mosquitoes would have no effect. With these new genes, the mosquitoes will reproduce more rapidly, hopefully causing the new species to out-compete the wild species.