Published Autumn 1998
A genetic swat
It's probably too much to hope that science can teach mosquitoes not to bite people.
But a research team that includes Notre Dame entomologist Frank Collins is making headway on what may be the next best thing: a way to make mosquitoes unable to infect people with diseases when they pierce the skin to suck out a meal of blood.
According to a report published this past spring in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Collins, the Clark Professor of Biological Sciences at Notre Dame, and co-investigators have succeeded in installing a new gene in a species of mosquito and having that gene persist into ensuing generations.
All the new gene did was change the mosquito's eye color. But it's hoped that the same technique could be used to introduce genes that make mosquitoes unable to transmit pathogens that cause diseases. One such disease, malaria, infects hundreds of millions of people each year, killing between 2 million and 3 million, mostly infants and children.