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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/10/03/MN47639.DTL
Engineered mosquitoes could fight malaria
Gene sequences a new weapon against diseases
Ecologists are calling for a broad new debate on the peril and promise of enlisting genetically altered mosquitoes in the fight against malaria.
The call came along with the announcement by molecular biologists Wednesday that they had essentially completed efforts to sequence the genomes of the disease-spreading anopheles mosquito and plasmodium parasite.
Having those gene sequences in hand brings the possibility of some novel approaches to reducing deaths from malaria, dengue fever and other insect- borne diseases. Each year, about 2.7 million people, mostly children, die of malaria alone.
For example, new genes could be introduced into laboratory mosquitoes that would block transmission of the deadly parasites. If the new genes are passed along when the insects reproduce, interbreeding might spread the desired trait through wild populations.
In theory, that could save millions of lives in developing countries, but experts warned that a lot more research was needed to make sure any such gene- based tools could be used safely.
"There aren't any international guidelines on this yet," said Michael Fernandez, a molecular biologist and director of science at the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology, a nonprofit research project in Washington, D.C., financed by the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Thomas W. Scott, a medical entomologist at UC Davis, said genetic control strategies deserved a serious look given the magnitude of the malaria problem. Scott was lead author of an article in Science on Wednesday expressing the consensus from a recent international meeting of "vector ecologists" -- experts in the organisms that carry human diseases.
"There are a lot of questions, there are significant challenges, but the public health impact is so huge, it's worth exploring in a thorough and systematic way," he said. "That's the bottom line for me."
One potential danger is that gene modifications could go awry in the wild, perhaps breeding new generations of "superbugs" and parasitic survivors even more deadly than those now bedeviling sub-Saharan Africa.
At the same time, Scott said, gene-based strategies are doomed to fail without a full understanding of the way insects reproduce and interact with other species in a real-world setting.
"We need to examine it in a systematic way," Scott said during an interview.
"I don't think we should just slam the door on it, because of what our opinions might be right now."
Heated political and scientific debates are hardly new when it comes to such gene-modified organisms as strawberries and corn. But mosquitoes and malaria appear to pose much thornier questions, with much higher stakes, than anything that's gone on before.
"We're talking now about a completely mobile, human-bloodsucking, human- pathogen-transmitting animal, versus a strawberry," Scott said. "These are different kettles of fish."
In the Science paper, Scott and colleagues argue that an incomplete understanding of "parasite transmission ecology" is "a big hurdle" to any effective use of genetically modified mosquitoes. Replacing dangerous populations of insects with safer varieties is an extraordinarily difficult task, they say, complicated by such variables as mosquito mating patterns, population size and structure, and genetic exchanges between neighboring populations.
If parasites eventually evolve resistance to the modified mosquitoes, the result of early experiments could be even worse disease outbreaks in the future, especially if human immune systems and other defenses are let down in the meantime.
Those questions all have to be addressed in a systematic fashion, Scott said, starting, for now, with a detailed outline of the issues, then proceeding with the appropriate regulatory structures and experimental plans to find the answers.
The ecologists suggested international organizations such as the World Health Organization might need to establish guidelines to ensure ecological safety for the research to move forward.
