Malaria-carrying mosquitoes are discovered with a target site, which could help develop pesticides that are not toxic only to the Anopheles gambiae mosquito, but also other mosquito species.
This new pesticide will not affect humans and other mammals. In addition, this new finding could one day provide a safer and more effective control of mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria.
Thanks to the Mayo Clinic researcher Yuan-Ping Pang, Ph.D. for making this discovery. A chemist and expert in computer-aided molecular design, Pang identified two unique amino acid residues — called cysteine (286) and arginine (339) — that exist in three mosquito species and the German cockroach.
The amino acid residues could potentially be targeted for a pesticide capable of incapacitating only insects carrying these residues, and not mammals which do not carry.
The current issue of PLoS ONE carries these findings. It is an open-access journal published by the Public Library of Science.
