Washington, October 6 (ANI): Researchers have revealed that an
African mosquito species with a deadly capacity to transmit
malaria has a perplexing evolutionary history. According to the
new study by Igor Sharakhov from the Fralin Life Science
Institute at Virginia Tech and Maryam Kamali of Tehran, closely
related African mosquito species originated the ability to
transmit human malaria multiple times during their recent
evolution. The discovery could have implications for malaria
control by enabling researchers to detect and target specific
genetic changes associated with the capacity to transmit a
parasite. Malaria causes as many as 907,000 deaths each year,
mostly among children in sub-Saharan Africa. Anopheles
mosquitoes, which bite mainly between dusk and dawn, transmit
human malaria by spreading Plasmodium parasites that multiply in
the human liver and infect red blood cells. But of the more than
400 species of mosquito belonging to the Anopheles genus, only
about 20 are effective vectors of human malar