###BASE_URL###
compilation of all relevant GENET-news articles
click here to read news on GE mosquitoes from Malaysia only
click to read news on GE mosqitoes from the Cayman Islands only
2007-05-17 | permalink
Scientists in Italy say they have identified a potential weapon against malaria living inside the blood-sucking mosquitoes that spread the disease -- their internal bacteria. [...] Such bacteria could potentially be genetically altered later to attack the malaria parasite when it reaches the mosquito, said Daniele Daffonchio at the Universita degli Studi di Milano, one of five Italian universities behind the research.
2007-04-13 | permalink
Indian public health experts are not at all excited by the news that American scientists have created genetically modified mosquitoes to help fight malaria, saying it had been tried here before and abandoned as a failure. ’We tried genetic control in the 1970s and abandoned it,’ P.L. Joshi, director of the National Vector Borne Diseases Control Program in New Delhi, told IANS. ’It seemed to work in the lab but failed at field level.’ [...] In any case, the work by US scientists is still far from being taken to the field. So far they have only managed to genetically engineer the mosquitoes to be resistant to a form of malaria that affects mice. This is different from the form that affects humans.
2007-03-20 | permalink
Mosquitoes genetically engineered to resist infection with a malaria parasite outbreed their normal cousins and might be used to help control malaria, U.S. researchers said on Monday. They said their study suggests that releasing such genetically altered insects could help battle malaria, which kills up to 3 million people a year around the globe, most of them small children.
2006-12-13 | permalink
A plant-destroying virus farmers call one of their worst enemies may soon be an ally in the fight against crop pests and mosquitoes, say University of Florida researchers. Scientists genetically modified tobacco mosaic virus so that it produces a natural, environmentally friendly insecticide, turning the pathogen into a microscopic chemical factory, said Dov Borovsky, an entomologist with UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. The modified virus is almost completely harmless to plants and simply produces the insecticide.