It is well known how mosquitoes bite. They use the needle like mouth-parts to stab through the skin of the victim. If it is genetically possible to avoid the growth of these needle like parts in the female mosquitoes it would do wonders. In my area the mosquito menace is so much that i find it very difficult to tackle. They turn out in huge numbers once all the lamps are switched off. In darkness, I need to find a way to locate them and get rid of them. That's the reason why i came up with this idea.

Yet another way is to implant Luciferin protein/ Luciferase enzyme in the mosquito's DNA. We know that Luciferase is responsible for bio-luminescence. If it were possible to do it, then these mosquitoes will glow in the dark and it would be easy to trap them. Surely it would be nice to see a mosquito that glows. isn't that a wonderful thing? The way it happens is as follows: The mosquito that receives it in its DNA will pass it on to the siblings through the reproductive process. It is an evolutionary process.

It would be nice if we could identify the mosquitoes causing Filariasis and Dengue fever. If they are targeted with this technique it may help in combating them. In fact it would be nice if different categories of harmful mosquitoes is engineered to release different colors ( i.e  a unique color for each category). If Luciferin cannot be adopted, we can rely on different colors of fluorescent proteins similar to the GFP's - Green fluorescent protein) for identifying different categories of mosquitoes.
GFP's works like this- The GFP protein fluoresces only when it is exposed to a color of some wavelength. Different variants of GFP respond to different colors of the electromagnetic spectrum. For identifying mosquitoes we can design a device that emits the required colors and there-by induce the protein in the mosquito to glow. That will surely help us know what are the various types of mosquitoes are present in a given region of space. This will be helpful to the health department officials to take informed decisions.

Genetic Engineering has the necessary tools to get this done. We could slowly propagate this throughout the mosquito's community.

Regards, Prakash Vaithyanathan


I am Prakash Vaithyanathan, a Science Teacher from Chennai, India.
pvaithyanathan@gmail.com
prof2help@gmail.com