Mosquitoes will no longer transmit disease in the future

A decade ago scientists announced it was possible to put a foreign gene into a mosquito's genome. A year ago, scientists announced the successful use of an artificial gene that could prevent viruses in mosquitoes from reproducing. But how can this work be done with only a small amount of mosquitoes in the laboratory for tens of millions of mosquitoes spreading the disease around the world?

Scientists from Virginia Tech and the University of California Irvine have demonstrated the ability to express a unique strange gene in the female mosquito's germline, a necessary prerequisite for implementing genetic control strategies in the future. hybrid in mosquitoes so that all mosquito descendants in the laboratory and wild mosquitoes will carry genes that can stop the reproduction of the virus.

Now, if the laboratory-grown mosquito does not have the ability to support viral reproduction to be mated with wild-type mosquitoes, only half of their descendants carry the anti-virus gene.

Aedes aegypti mosquitoes carry yellow fever virus and dengue fever (Photo: Unep.org)

never mind. Researchers have been investigating how to change this outcome so that all descendants will lose the ability to transmit the disease. However, these experiments have been hampered by the inability to expressing strange genes in mosquito embryonic cells.

Researching Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, yellow fever virus and dengue mosquitoes, researchers are working on creating a ' gene control system ' using information copied from nanos genes (nos) , a gene that is essential for germline formation . 'Think of nanos information as the room's key to open,' said entomology professor Zach Adelman.

Using the nanos ' key ', the team succeeded in obtaining the germline specific expression of Mos1, an enzyme that is separated from the fly as an interchangeable element (TE) - part of matter. The gene has the ability to move around. Mos1 can move anything attached to it and can duplicate itself and anything that sticks to it, such as the gene that controls dengue virus to stop reproducing.

And so, in the future, all the descendants of mosquitoes will no longer be able to spread the disease.

Thanh Van