Aug
Mosquitoes are known for transmitting deadly viruses to humans, but theinsects themselves are susceptible to viral infection. According to astudy published in the open-access journal PLoS Pathogens,researchers at Johns Hopkins University have described a virus thatinfects the mosquito best known for transmitting malaria - Anophelesgambiae. Malaria kills over one million people worldwideevery year, and the researchers believe that the infectious mosquitovirus might be used to control malaria by passing on new geneticinformation to A. gambiae.
AgDNV is a densonucleosis virus (densovirus) - a type common tomosquitoes and other insects but not infectious to humans and othervertebrates. The AgDNV virus does not actually harm mosquitoes, butresearchers believe it is highly infectious to larvae and is easilypassed to the adults.
Researcher Jason Rasgon, PhD (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of PublicHealth’s Malaria Research Institute) notes that this new finding cameabout while the investigators were actually trying to use Wolbachiabacteria to infect An. gambiae mosquito cells.Co-author Xiaoxia Ren was analyzing the gel used to detect the bacteriawhen an “artifact” that appeared as an unexpected prominent band in thegel was noticed.
Ragson admits that, “Finding artifacts such as this one duringexperiments is not uncommon, but we decided to investigate this onefurther since we kept observing it over and over. When we sequenced it,we were surprised to learn that we had found a new virus.”
The researchers believe that the virus can be altered to kill themosquito or make it incapable of transmitting malaria. In order to testhow much control the authors had over the virus, the altered the AgDNVso that adult mosquitoes presented a harmless green fluorescent proteinthat is spotted using a microscope.
“In theory, we could use this virus to produce a lethal toxin in themosquito or instruct the mosquito to die after 10 days, which is beforeit can transmit the malaria parasite to humans. However, these conceptsare many years away,” concludes Rasgon.
Viral Paratransgenesis in the Malaria Vector Anophelesgambiae
Ren X, Hoiczyk E, Rasgon JL
PLoS Pathogens (2008). 4(8):e1000135.
doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1000135
ClickHere to View Article
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Written by: Peter M Crosta
Copyright: Medical News Today