Inspired Interrogative

Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute

Good scientists ask how and why, but the best ask, what if? Marcelo Jacobs-Lorena’s inspired interrogative: What if we could create a new type of mosquito that could not transmit malaria to humans? Malaria threatens 40 percent of the world’s population and kills more than 1 million people every year. Researchers have long known that the malaria parasite is passed from person to person by female Anopheles mosquitoes. Stopping that transmission has been a vexing problem for millennia.

Instead of traditional solutions like bed nets, insecticides and antimalarial drugs, Jacobs-Lorena, a molecular entomologist at the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute (JHMRI), focused on building a “better” mosquito. He and his colleagues created a laboratory mosquito that carries a gene that thwarted the development of the malaria parasite by 80 percent. More recently, they announced that after nine generations, when fed malaria-infected blood, their genetically engineered mosquito had outsurvived the unaltered, malaria-friendly mosquitoes by more than two to one.

The next challenge is finding a way to drive the gene into natural mosquito populations. His lab is also excited by an alternative approach: altering the bacteria of the mosquito gut to make it unfriendly to the malaria parasite. “With the effort and financing being put forward,” Jacobs-Lorena says, “I think we will start making much more rapid progress.”