O’Brochta’s work, along with the work of others around the world, has focused on breaking the disease cycle by altering the characteristics of the mosquito. And much of that focus is on the mosquito’s ability to harbour the parasite.

“Most mosquitoes in Africa do not serve as a host for Plasmodium falciparum,” O’Brochta says. “The ability to serve as a host for malaria parasites is a very narrow trait.” So the question is: Could Anopheles be made to resist the parasite?

“That’s kind of the big idea,” he says. Science has learned how to alter the mosquito’s genome and has learned, roughly, which gene to add to make it resist the parasite, O’Brochta says.

But this new mosquito must also be made able to transmit the beneficial traits rapidly among the rest of its population. And that part has been difficult to engineer. “With mosquitoes, we’ve had virtually no success,” he says.

—Washington Post / Michael E. Ruane