Lab-Engineered Organsim Fights Malaria
"Malaria's new worst enemy may be a fungus." Scientists, part of US-British team, have created a fungus that not only attacks mosquitoes, but also the parasites inside them. It can eliminate more than 90 percent of malaria parasites deep within the mosquitoes. Malaria is caused by several species of single-celled organisms known as protozoans. Mosquitoes are the main shuttle for pathogens from person to person, so this mean if you control mosquitoes then you control malaria. So far, mosquitoes carrying malaria in Africa and Asia have adapted to the pesticides being used to kill them.
The small fungus, Metarhizium anisopliae, is a viable solution to this problem. It naturally infects the mosquitoes. Unlike pesticides, the fungus takes days to kill them. This may not sound good because the mosquitoes will have time to mate, but the more they mate, the less reason they have to evolve resistance since they are already able to pass along their genes. On the other hand, Raymond St. Leger and his team didn't want to just kill the mosquitoes. They added a few new genes to the fungus and turned it into a drug producing factory. First, the modified fungus bores a hole into the mosquito. Then, the added genes turn on inside and generate a host of malaria killing chemicals. These chemicals range anywhere from scorpion toxins to proteins from the human immune system. The chemicals are bad for parasites but don't do any extra harm to the mosquitoes.
I think that this discovery was well done and exciting. Although this is the case, it will probably take at least a couple more years before the fungus is effectively used in the world. After this innovation, this fungus can be commercially used in house paint or mosquito nests. Currently, malaria is a deadly disease worldwide. In Africa, 1 out of 5 childhood deaths are caused by malaria, and it costs Africa $12 billion a year. Worldwide, a child dies every 30 seconds from malaria. Clearly, finding a cure for malaria has been a critical part of the world's to-do list. In addition, this discovery could lead to many other future cures like one for Lyme disease.
Citations
Strain, Daniel. "Lab-engineered organism fights malaria." Science News. N.p.,
n.d. Web. 2 Mar. 2011. <http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/70311/
title/Lab-engineered_organism_fights_malaria>.
title/Lab-engineered_organism_fights_malaria>.
