Bioscience Chapter Database :: 3653 Chapters Now Online

Chapter category: Infectious Disease

Thinking Transgenic Vectors in a Population Context: Some Expectations and Many Open-Questions

This chapter appears in the following book:

Genetically Modified Mosquitoes for Malaria Control

Edited by: Christophe Boëte
ISBN: 1-58706-096-5
» Get more information about this book at landesbioscience.com «

Chapter authors:
Christine Chevillon, Richard E. Paul, Thierry de Meeus, François Renaud


[+] view image
The present papers tries to place questions regarding the eventual release of transgenic Plasmodium-resistant mosquitoes within an overall population context. This means a context that is not limited to selection outcomes regarding the resistance/susceptibility of the Anopheles targeted by transgenesis, but that also recovers selection outcomes regarding other traits, demographic outcomes (via the possible number of transgenic mosquitoes to release), and bio-diversity outcomes regarding the vectors and parasites that cocirculate in the chosen release locality. By considering all these outcomes together, we highlight missing biological data necessary for any correct quantitative evaluation of the probability of success of a transgenic release. Qualitative evaluations are nonetheless possible to perform: they suggest that there is a very weak probability for released transgenic mosquitoes to actually succeed in modifying malaria transmission. However, the main interest of the present discussion does not concern these qualitative conclusions. Instead, it highlights the necessary biological knowledge of malaria for a correct evaluation of the fate and consequences of eventual releases of transgenic vectors, and more generally of the evolutionary possibilities and constraints of any change in transmission characteristics. As such, we hope that the present discussion underlines the necessity to address new fundamental questions regarding malaria biology in order to actually capture the mechanics regulating the evolutionary dynamics of Plasmodium burdens and associated pathologies.

» Access chapter for $19



Additional chapters from this book:

Transgenic Mosquitoes for Malaria Control: Time to Spread Out of the Scientific Arena

Christophe Boëte

The release of mosquitoes that are genetically modified to destroy the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum is being considered as a possible method for malaria control. If many scientific que...

Predicting the Spread of a Transgene in African Malaria Vector Populations: Current Knowledge and Limitations

Frédéric Simard and Tovi Lehmann

One strategy for the control of malaria and other vector-borne diseases relies on the ambitious goal of depleting natural vector populations’ ability to transmit the pathogen through the introduct...

Everything (or Almost Everything) You Want to Know about Genetically Modified Mosquitoes for Malaria Control but Are (Maybe) Afraid to Ask

Christophe Boëte

This chapter is a brief introduction to the book “Genetically Modified Mosquitoes for Malaria Control”....

The Genetics of Vector-Host Interactions: Alternative Strategies for Genetic Engineering for Malaria Control

Willem Takken and Carlo Costantini

Malaria transmission is accomplished by the innate behavioural trait of mosquitoes to ingest vertebrate blood required for egg production. As human malaria parasites are, by definition, circulatin...

Malaria-Refractoriness in Mosquito: Just a Matter of Harbouring Genes?

Christophe Boëte

Amongst the last vector-based hopes for malaria control and possibly the most touted is, without doubt, the use of transgenic mosquitoes able to kill/ block the development of malaria parasites an...

Malaria Situation in the Beginning of the 2Ist Century

Mahamadou A. Théra, Abdoulaye A. Djimdé, Alassane Dicko, Mahamadou Diakité, Kassoum Kayentao, Boubacar Traoré, Amagana Dolo and Ogobara K. Doumbo

Falciparum malaria parasite an avian originated parasite has probably coevolved with human being (Homo sapiens) since the discovery of agriculture, around 20-30 000 years ago. The very devastating...

Advantages and Limitations of Transgenic Vector Control: Sterile Males versus Gene Drivers

Christopher Curtis, Paul G. Coleman, David W. Kelly and Diarmid H. Campbell-Lendrum

Transgenesis might be used to produce fitter and more acceptable sterile males than those hitherto produced with radiation or chemosterilants. It is possible to engineer a dominant lethal constr...

Genetically-Modified Mosquitoes for Malaria Control: Requirements to be Considered Before Field Releases

Yeya T. Touré and Bart G.J. Knols

The technical feasibility of the development of transgenic mosquitoes highly refractory to (rodent) malaria parasites has been demonstrated in the laboratory. Following this proof of principle, geneti...

The Epidemiological Consequences of Reducing the Transmission Intensity of P. falciparum

Hugh Reyburn and Chris Drakeley

Control methods which aim to reduce the human host’s exposure to infected mosquitoes (as is the desired outcome of a release of transgenic mosquitoes) will ideally reduce the frequency of malarial i...

Malaria Parasite Virulence in Mosquitoes and Its Implications for the Introduction and Efficacy of GMM Malaria Control Programmes

Heather Ferguson, Sylvain Gandon, Margaret Mackinnon and Andrew Read

Initial scepticism about the ecological feasibility of the genetically modified mosquito (GM) approach for malaria control1,2 has been supported by some recent experimental studies indicating that the...

Immune System Polymorphism Implications for Genetic Engineering

Tom J. Little

As is apparent from the evolution of antibiotic resistance or vaccine escape mutants, parasites and pathogens have the capacity to repeatedly evolve adaptations which enable them to overcome medical...

Malaria and Structural Adjustment: Proof by Contradiction

Julie Castro and Damien Millet

The evolution of malaria over the last thirty years shows that far from regressing, the disease is actually in a process of reglobalisation. While health institutions confine them selves to analysin...

Ethics and Community Engagement for GM Insect Vector Release

Darryl Macer

The ethical, social and legal issues raised by the release of genetically modified insect vectors in public health need to be considered in depth at an early stage in the development of protocols to...

Thinking Transgenic Vectors in a Population Context: Some Expectations and Many Open-Questions

Christine Chevillon, Richard E. Paul, Thierry de Meeus, François Renaud

The present papers tries to place questions regarding the eventual release of transgenic Plasmodium-resistant mosquitoes within an overall population context. This means a context that is not limite...

Development of a Toolkit for Manipulating Malaria Vectors

Flaminia Catteruccia, Anthony E. Brown, Elisa Petris, Christina Scali and Andrea Crisanti

This chapter will review the efforts made by several laboratories to generate in Anopheles mosquitoes a variety of molecular tools, similar to those available to the Drosophila community, to exploit...


SIGN IN

Email:


Password:


lost password?




[ Home | Authors | Editors | Custom Books | Chapter Reprints | Subscribe | Contact | Biotoons ]