{"id":125600,"date":"2021-07-28T10:22:43","date_gmt":"2021-07-28T17:22:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/07\/how-an-altered-strand-of-dna-can-cause-malaria-spreading-mosquitoes-to-self-destruct"},"modified":"2021-07-28T10:22:43","modified_gmt":"2021-07-28T17:22:43","slug":"how-an-altered-strand-of-dna-can-cause-malaria-spreading-mosquitoes-to-self-destruct","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/07\/how-an-altered-strand-of-dna-can-cause-malaria-spreading-mosquitoes-to-self-destruct","title":{"rendered":"How An Altered Strand Of DNA Can Cause Malaria-Spreading Mosquitoes To Self-Destruct"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/how-an-altered-strand-of-dna-can-cause-malaria-spreading-mosquitoes-to-self-destruct2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Despite years of efforts, malaria remains a major health problem. The mosquito-borne parasitic disease sickens more than 200 million people every year and kills more than 400000, many of whom are children.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>For the first time, scientists have shown that a new kind of genetic engineering can crash populations of malaria-spreading mosquitoes.<\/p>\n<p>In the landmark <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-021-24790-6\">study<\/a>, published Wednesday in the journal <em>Nature Communications<\/em>, researchers placed the genetically modified mosquitoes in a special laboratory that simulated the conditions in sub-Saharan Africa, where they spread the deadly disease.<\/p>\n<p>The male mosquitoes were engineered with a sequence of DNA known as a \u201cgene drive\u201d that can rapidly transmit a deleterious mutation that essentially wipes out populations of the insects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite years of efforts, malaria remains a major health problem. The mosquito-borne parasitic disease sickens more than 200 million people every year and kills more than 400000, many of whom are children. For the first time, scientists have shown that a new kind of genetic engineering can crash populations of malaria-spreading mosquitoes. In the landmark [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":621,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,11,412,1495],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/621"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125600\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}