Bee Venom Enzyme Helps Fight Malaria

Transgenic Mosquitoes Enlisted in Fight Against Malaria
Mario Osava, Inter Press Service, 7/20/2006

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 20 (Tierramérica) - Brazil's René Rachou Research Centre has genetically modified a mosquito to eliminate its ability to transmit the parasite that causes malaria.

If this mosquito can reproduce in nature, and replace the original disease-carrying mosquito, it would help control a disease that affects 300 to 500 million people each year -- 90 percent in Africa -- and claiming one million lives annually.

But it is still a long way off, "at least 10 years," scientist Luciano Andrade Moreira told Tierramérica. He coordinates the research that began in 2003 at the Rachou Center, of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, in Belo Horizonte, capital of the eastern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais.

The genetic modification of the mosquito involves introducing into its genes a protein that produces an enzyme to block the malaria parasite. Five years ago, U.S. researchers discovered the enzyme in bee venom. Its function is to prevent the parasite from leaving the insect's intestine…