Source: News Center, Zhongshan School of Medicine
Written by: News Center, Zhongshan School of Medicine
Translated by: Zheng Xiaoying
Edited by: Wang Dongmei

The paper "Wolbachia invade Anopheles stephensi Populations and Induces Refractoriness to Plasmodium Infection" by SYSU-MSU Joint Center of Vector Control for Tropical Disease and Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Michigan State University was published in Science (Vol. 340) on May 10, 2013.
In the research, Wolbachia was introduced into Anopheles stephensi (vector of malaria in Middle East and South Asia) by scientists. The infected female Anopheles would pass the bacteria to her offspring, and all mosquitoes would not be infected with malaria parasites after 8 generations. The study was conducted by Professor Zhiyong Xi, the director of SYSU-MSU Joint Center of Vector Control for Tropical Disease. Guowu Bian, a professor of Key Laboratory for Tropical Disease Control of Sun Yat-sen University and Department of Parasitology of Zhongshan School of Medicine, is the first author of the paper.

The study demonstrated that using Wolbachia, a bacterium in insects, could prevent mosquitoes from transmitting malaria to humans. In a sense, Wolbachia would act as a "vaccine" for mosquitoes, which intervenes the development of malaria pathogen - Plasmodium in mosquitoes, so as to interrupt the transmission of malaria to humans by them.

At present, Wolbachia has been successfully established in Anopheles stephensi and spread to the entire mosquito population Professor Xi's team.

As the first author of the paper, Professor Guowu Bian was responsible for the core technique in the study - developing the mosquito line carrying a stable Wolbachia infection by embryonic microinjection. Out of the thousands of experiments, a female that carried Wolbachia was selected. The mosquito line derived from this female has maintained Wolbachia infection with a 100 percent infection frequency through 34 generations and the number is still growing. Female mosquitoes carrying Wolbachia were then released to a wild uninfected population in various ratios by the team. In each case, the entire population carried the bacteria in 8 generations.

Note: a link to the paper on Science website: www.sciencemag.org/content/340/6133/748.abstract