Glowing Gonads: A Novel Approach Against Malaria

Filed in archive Diagnostics, Methodologies and Instrumentation on October 12, 2005

Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease that plagues about a hundred countries and kills about 3 million yearly. Researchers from the Imperial College of London propose releasing sterile male mosquitoes as a means to curb malaria-carrying mosquitoes:

"Female mosquitoes are responsible for spreading malaria, and also for damage to crops, but they are only able to breed once before dying. By forcing females to breed with sterile males, we can stop them creating additional mosquitoes and at the same time, reduce the population."

It does sound like a "green" insecticide, with the additional advantage of being very target-specific. This is an approach that, according to the New Scientist coverage, has also been proven successful in eradicating the Mediterranean fruit fly. But how do you sex millions of mosquito larvae for release to the environment to be sure that you'll be releasing purely male mosquitos?

In a paper published in Nature Biotechnology, researchers used the gene for enhanced green fluorescent protein to make male gonads glow, and using flow cytometer, were able to robotically sort male larvae.