People are often surprised when I say that mosquitoes are the deadliest venomous animal in the world (the deadliest animal period, really, if we don’t count ourselves). Mosquito bites—and the venoms delivered by them—kill upwards of 750,000 people worldwide every year thanks to the lethal beasties harbored within them. Most of those are due to microscopic parasites in the genus Plasmodium, which are responsible for the diseases collectively called malaria. Malaria accounts for around 500,000 of those mosquito-caused deaths, according to the World Health Organization—only a fraction of the over 210 million cases of malaria reported every year. Not surprisingly, there is a lot of time, money, and intellectual capital being invested into finding ways to reduce those numbers. And as the vectors, mosquitoes—especially the few species that carry the most devastating diseases—are a key target.
While killing mosquitoes seems like a simple objective, it can be quite complicated in practice. Mosquitoes are hardy little buggers, and rapidly evolve resistance to pesticides. And when effective pesticides can be found, such as DDT, they tend to be a little too effective, killing a wide diversity of insects and causing ecological harm to local biodiversity. In the hope of wiping out disease-carrying mosquito populations, scientists have tried all sorts of methods, from increasing natural predators to releasing sterile male mosquitoes in swarms. But the most recent approach sounds like it’s straight out of a science fiction thriller: an international team of scientists has genetically engineered a fluorescent fungus that wipes out mosquitoes using venom toxins from spiders and scorpions. Continue reading “FrankenFungus Armed With Venom Toxins Could Join The War Against Malaria”
