Watch out, malaria — scientists are coming for you with genetically engineered mosquitoes. A team of researchers has altered the DNA in mosquitoes so they can fight and kill the parasites that cause malaria inside their own bodies. That way, the insects can’t transmit the deadly parasites to humans. And for the first time, scientists have armed these malaria-killing mosquitoes with another genetic superpower — the ability to pass on their disease-destroying genes to 99.5% of their offspring. “In principal, if you have a population of 100 million mosquitoes and you released 1 million of these genetically modified mosquitoes into the same area, the new gene would...
↧
