Sea cucumbers 'new malaria weapon'

Sea cucumbers could provide a new weapon against malaria, research suggests.

The slug-like creatures which live on the sea floor have a gene that can be used to stop the malaria parasite developing in the bodies of mosquitoes.

One day this approach might help prevent the biting insects infecting humans and spreading the disease, say scientists.

The sea cucumber gene produces a protein called lectin which is poisonous to the malaria parasite. Researchers fused part of the gene with part of a mosquito gene, causing the insect to release lectin into its gut when feeding.

Laboratory tests showed that the protein significantly impaired development of malaria parasites inside the insects. It appeared to be effective against a number of the four different strains of parasite that cause malaria in humans.

Professor Bob Sinden, from Imperial College London, one of the scientists who reported the research in the online journal PLoS Pathogens, said: "These results are very promising and show that genetically engineering mosquitoes in this way has a clear impact on the parasites' ability to multiply inside the mosquito host."

However, much more work still had to be done before the technique could be used to curb the spread of malaria, he said.

Although the sea cucumber protein significantly reduced the number of parasites in mosquitoes, it did not totally remove them from all insects. At the current stage of development, the genetically modified mosquitoes would remain dangerous to humans.

"Ultimately, one aim of our field is to find a way of genetically engineering mosquitoes so that the malaria parasite cannot develop inside them," said Prof Sinden. "This study is one more step along the road towards achieving that goal, not least because it has been shown that more than one species of malaria can be killed in this way."

About 40% of the world's population, around 2.5 billion people, are at risk of malaria. Of these, more than 500 million are made severely ill with malaria each year and more than one million die from the infection. Malaria is an especially a serious problem in Africa, where it is responsible for one in every five childhood deaths.

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