GM bacterium offers way to block malaria

A paper about the research team's findings was published on the website of Science, an international journal, on Friday.

The authors demonstrated that introducing 5 percent of male or female mosquitoes colonized with the symbiotic bacteria was sufficient for the bacteria to spread through the population and colonize 100 percent of mosquitoes for three subsequent generations, according to one peer review.

Another peer review said: "One of the bottlenecks of paratransgenesis has been the inability to maintain the bacteria in the insect for a prolonged period of time and, importantly, to spread the bacteria to the offspring. In this work, Wang showed that a specific bacterium found in mosquitoes can stay in the insect for a long period of time and be easily propagated to other mosquitoes."

Wang said laboratory tests have been completed, and the team will conduct field experiments in some African countries.

The research may bring new insight to approaches for inhibiting the spread of other infectious diseases, such as dengue fever, which is also spread by mosquitoes, according to the institute.

According to the National Health and Family Planning Commission, 3,189 Chinese citizens contracted malaria last year. It is increasingly difficult to prevent and fight the disease due to globalization. Only three of the cases last year were contracted locally.