An "Evolution-Proof" Bio-Pesticide to Control Malaria

Jason Rasgon of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the U.S. will engineer a virus to express a scorpion toxin that kills mosquitoes. After infecting mosquito larvae, the virus will express the killer gene when the insect becomes old enough to reproduce, but not old enough to transmit the malaria parasite. By allowing the mosquito to reproduce, the virus not only will be transmitted vertically to the next generation, but will also significantly slow the evolution of resistance to the gene.