Genetically altered bacteria in mosquito guts can kill the parasite that causes deadly malaria without harming either the mosquitoes or the people they bite. Researchers modified the bacterium, Pantoea agglomerans, to secrete proteins that are toxic to the malaria parasite but not to its insect or human hosts. “In the past, we worked to genetically modify the mosquito to resist malaria, but genetic modification of bacteria is a simpler approach,” says Marcelo Jacobs-Lorena, senior author of the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
