Malaria infects more than 200 million people each year and causes more than 430,000 deaths.
Prof Andrea Casanti, said: The field has been trying to tackle malaria for more than 100 years.
If successful, this technology has the potential to substantially reduce the transmission of malaria.
To be infertile, females must inherit two mutated copies of a fertility gene, one for each chromosome.
(In males, possessing the same mutated genes seems to have no effect on fertility.)
Normally, natural selection would weed out such a harmful trait.
As a result, infertility can spread rapidly through the population.
Exploring target genes is also helping the researchers to learn more about basic mosquito biology.
The results of the study were published in the journalNature Biotechnology.
source: www.techworm.net
