The team from Imperial College London were able to crash caged populations of the malaria vector mosquito Anopheles gambiae in only 7-11 generations.
This is the first time experiments have been able to completely block the reproductive capacity of a complex organism in the laboratory using a designer molecular approach.
The technique, called gene drive, was used to selectively target the specific mosquito species An. gambiae that is responsible for malaria transmission in sub-Saharan Africa. There are around 3500 species of mosquito worldwide, of which only 40 related species can carry malaria.
The hope is that mosquitoes carrying a gene drive would be released in the future, spreading female infertility within local malaria-carrying mosquito populations and causing them to collapse.
Read more at Imperial College London
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