Interesting!
Researchers at CalTech have published a way to use "selfish genes" (transposable elements) to potentially insert malaria and dengue-resistance genes into mosquito populations, thus preventing mosquitoes from spreading these diseases to humans. By coupling a toxin/antidote vector with an effector gene conferring malaria or dengue resistance, it actually becomes deadly for the insect to NOT have the gene. In this way, the selfish gene can quickly propagate through a wild type insect population.
The greatest challenge to this course of disease prevention is making sure that enough genetically modified mosquitoes are released into the wild to drive out the genetically wild type mosquitoes pre-existing in the population. Plus, there are subpopulations of mosquitoes that do not mate with each other, so it will be necessary to introduce genetically modified "representatives" to each subpopulation. Both of these caveats can definitely be overcome.
Read the article, published in The Scientist, here. (The actual paper was published online, www.sciencemag.com, as a Science report.)
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