ABSTRACT
The problem of malaria Human malaria, caused exclusively by Plasmodium parasites, infects up to 500 million people and results in almost 3 million deaths per year (Hay et al., 2004). The malaria parasites are dependent on Anopheles mosquitoes for transmission between human hosts (Collins and Paskewitz, 1995). Control of the disease is currently limited to antiparasitic drugs and mosquito control (Beaty, 2000) and is hampered by the evolution of drug and insecticide resistance (Talisuna et al., 2004; Hemingway and Ranson, 2000). Thus, there has been a recent concerted effort to develop genetically modied Anopheles mosquitoes that are unable to transmit Plasmodium (Ito et al., 2002; Marrelli et al., 2007).
