Two Ways of Making Malaria-Proof Mosquitoes

Mosquitoes carry microbes that cause devastating diseases, from the viruses behind Zika, dengue, and yellow fever, to the Plasmodium parasites that cause malaria. But mosquitoes, like all other animals, also harbor a more benign coterie of bacteria. And some members of this microbiome, far from causing diseases, might be the keys to preventing them.

When a mosquito bites someone with malaria, parasites rush up its snout and end up in its gut. There, the parasites mate and multiply, creating a new generation that can infect the next person who gets bitten. It’s also where they meet the rest of a mosquito’s native bacteria. , from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, reasoned that if he could engineer those native bacteria to kill , he could stop mosquitoes from ever transmitting malaria.