Give malaria a deadline – The New York Times

Kevin Esvelt, who is studying the evolution of genetic mechanisms at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the biological aspects of mosquito control can now be solved. "With this achievement, the main obstacles to saving lives are no longer essentially technical, but social and diplomatic," he said.

Starting a gene search in nature is risky. Once released, it can not be recalled or disabled easily in case of problems. In 2016, the National Academy of Sciences called for extensive testing and public consultations before the publication of any gene campaign.

In 2003, Austin Burt, a biologist at Imperial College London and co-author of the new paper, presented the theory of how genetic drives could be used to control pest populations. He hopes that a small-scale field trial can be launched in Africa in five years.

The implementation of such a program would involve the release of a few hundred car-carrying mosquitoes in each village. "We would not have to hit every village, maybe only 1%," said Dr. Burt. Complete eradication is not necessary; the malaria parasite can not maintain its populations once the number of mosquitoes is below a certain number.

"There are no unexpected technical or regulatory deadlines," said Dr. Burt, "it is possible to consider that genetic mosquitoes, combined with other approaches, have been able to eliminate malaria in many parts of Africa in 15 years. "

Achieving such a goal will likely require a continent-wide agreement, as a development campaign, once launched, could probably not be limited to just one country and biologists want to avoid any unintended consequences. All insects analyzed to date depend on the doubleex gene to direct their sexual development. This could be disastrous if an altered gene transmission of Doubleex had somehow jumped from mosquitoes to another species of insect, such as bees.

"This is not possible," said Dr. Crisanti. He noted that each insect species has its own version of the doubleex gene and the highly conserved region of the gene, so a search for genes targeting one species would not work in any other. For the same reason, the technique could potentially target a wide range of pests, each individually targeted.