Talk about setting a thief to catch a thief, check out an
article at
Science Alert about a way to keep mosquitoes from passing along malaria. Hat tip to
Instapundit for the link.
The team discovered that a new type of spore-forming single-celled microbe found in mosquitoes, which they've called Microsporidia MB, has the amazing ability to stop the transmission of Plasmodium falciparum – the parasitic protozoan which causes most malaria cases.
It also doesn't seem to hurt the mosquito, meaning that if we can increase the prevalence of Microsporidia MB in local mosquito populations, it could be a good way to stop malaria in its tracks without having to mess up the rest of the ecosystem.
Because Microsporidia MB is passed down the maternal line, once it's in the mosquito population, it's unlikely to be going anywhere. The team found that some areas they tested already had nine percent of the mosquito population with the malaria-busting microbe.
And the article adds something already underway that I’d not seen.
We are already using a transmission-blocking symbiont called Wolbachia to control dengue, a virus transmitted by mosquitoes," University of Glasgow microbiologist Steven Sinkins says.
"The Microsporidia MB symbiont has some similar characteristics, making it an attractive prospect for developing comparable approaches for malaria control."
This is some neat science, both dengue and malaria are things we could easily do without.
