{"id":9967,"date":"2025-07-23T17:23:28","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T22:23:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=9967"},"modified":"2025-07-23T17:23:31","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T22:23:31","slug":"a-genetic-tweak-could-prevent-mosquitoes-from-transmitting-malaria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2025\/07\/23\/a-genetic-tweak-could-prevent-mosquitoes-from-transmitting-malaria\/","title":{"rendered":"A genetic tweak could prevent mosquitoes from transmitting malaria"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/A genetic tweak could prevent mosquitoes from transmitting malaria\">NPR<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Each year, 263 million people get malaria. But from the parasite&#8217;s perspective, infecting humans is harder than you might think, and requires completing an epic journey within the tiny body of a mosquito.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>First, the mosquito must suck the blood of an individual infected with malaria \u2014 bringing the&nbsp;<em>Plasmodium<\/em>&nbsp;parasite into the insect&#8217;s gut. Then the parasite must travel to the critter&#8217;s salivary glands, where it&#8217;s poised to be injected into the mosquito&#8217;s next victim via a bite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now a team of researchers have found a way to interrupt this crucial journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By using gene editing to make a tiny tweak to the mosquito&#8217;s genome \u2014 one that changes just a single amino acid \u2014 parasites were largely prevented from reaching their final destination. The change effectively rendered laboratory mosquitoes&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1038\/s41586-025-09283-6\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"highly resistant to spreading malaria, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><u>highly resistant to spreading malaria<\/u><\/a>, researchers report Wednesday in&nbsp;<em>Nature.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NPR Each year, 263 million people get malaria. But from the parasite&#8217;s perspective, infecting humans is harder than you might think, and requires completing an epic journey within the tiny body of a mosquito. First, the mosquito must suck the blood of an individual infected with malaria \u2014 bringing the&nbsp;Plasmodium&nbsp;parasite into the insect&#8217;s gut. Then [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[38,73],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malaria","category-mosquito-bourne-diseases"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9967"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9968,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9967\/revisions\/9968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}