Fighting Malaria Thru Genetic Engineering

In articles published in Science and eLife, scientists and policy experts propose fighting malaria using genetic engineering. A new technology for editing DNA known as Crispr may allow scientists to render the insects resistant to the malaria parasite or it might be possible to engineer infertility into mosquito DNA, thus decreasing their population significantly. This new technology could potentially be used against a wide range of other species that are deemed a threat, like invasive predators, herbicide-resistant weeds, and bat-killing fungi.

Although research on this procedure is in its infancy, the authors of the new papers say it could be discussed as early as possible. "Rather than just running off and immediately let this thing loose, we should start having conversations about this," said George Church, a Harvard geneticist and a co-author of the new papers.

Read the following articles for more information: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2014/07/16/science.1254287, http://elifesciences.org/content/early/2014/07/17/eLife.03401, and http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/science/a-call-to-fight-malaria-one-mosquito-at-a-time-by-altering-dna.html?_r=0.