Department of Defense targets mosquitoes.

• Author: Allen, Peter
• Position: YOUR LIFE

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the Department of Defense has awarded up to $14,900,000 to a team of researchers from six University of California campuses to use gene editing as a way to control disease-spreading mosquitoes.

Insects that carry disease represent one of the greatest worldwide threats to human health, with billions of people currently at risk of infection. Last year, more than 700,000,000 individuals were infected with malaria or dengue fever, resulting in 440,000 deaths--and the prevalence of the Zika virus is rising.

"Protecting the public from these diseases is difficult," says Craig Montell, professor of neuroscience at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "Vaccines to prevent the diseases either don't exist or are not very effective, and current mosquito control methods are inadequate. Therefore, there is a critical need for a transformative, species-specific, safe, and effective method to control mosquitoes."

Called Safe Genes, the DARPA project will focus on a technique pioneered by two team members: UC-San Diego's Ethan Bier (professor of cell and developmental biology) and UC-Irvine's...