MicrobeWorld - Symbiotic Bacteria Halt Malaria Life Cycle in Mosquitoes

Allowing mosquitos to feed on engineered strains of the symbiotic bacteria that naturally live in their midguts may provide the answer to preventing the malarial parasite Plasmodium from completing the relevant stages of its life cycle in the airborne host and being transmitted to humans, researchers claim. A team at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Malaria Research Institute has generated engineered strains of a common symbiotic bacterium Pantoea agglomerans that resides in the midgut of the anopheles mosquito. The bacterium is modified to secrete proteins that directly block development and survival of the Plasmodial ookinetes and oocysts developing in the midgut, which would normally give rise to the sporozoites that are transmitted into humans through the mosquito’s saliva.