Using Mosquito Anti-Plasmodial Symbiotic Bacteria to Block the Spread of Malaria

Sibao Wang of the Institute for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Duoquan Wang from the China CDC together with their international partners Abdoulaye Diabaté of Institut de Recherche en Sciences de La Santé in Burkina Faso and Marcelo Jacobs-Lorena of Johns Hopkins University in the U.S. will develop procedures to efficiently introduce a specific bacterium into field mosquitoes in order to evaluate effectiveness of the bacterium spread through mosquito populations and to block parasite transmission in a more realistic setting. Introducing anti-Plasmodial symbiotic bacteria into mosquito populations can potentially transform mosquitoes into ineffective vectors. This unconventional approach has already shown promise in the laboratory.