Learning from Mosquitos
Image Thanks to Science Mag
Just like us, mosquitos are susceptible to the parasite that causes malaria. Unlike us many are inherently capable of fighting off the infection. Researches, according to ScienceMag.org, “have figured out how the insect’s immune system conquers the parasite”. Such an understanding could be used to fight malarial spread in humans.
Our immune systems are designed to adapt to specific threats over time. A mosquito, however is not designed this way; and yet it can still fight off an infection such as Plasmodium (the single-celled microbe behind malaria). Vector biologist Janneth Rodrigues vector biologist and colleagues at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland, conducted an experiment to explore how mosquitos are able to do this. The experiment and its conclusions went like this:
They fed two groups of mosquitoes mouse blood crawling with Plasmodium. One group became infected, but the other—placed in a room too hot for Plasmodium to grow—did not. Seven days later, the researchers fed both groups the Plasmodium-infected mouse blood again. The infected group was up to 10 times better at killing the Plasmodium.
The team established that a mosquito has two means to fight of infection: granulocytes and bacteria in the gut. There were three times more granulocytes in he preinfected group than the uninfected. These little xenophobes detect foreign bodies in the blood and either kill it or signal another cell to kill it. Bacteria were discovered in unusual parts of the infected mosquito, as a result of a weakened gut after infection – and so they concluded that this process trigers the production of more granulocytes, which bolster the immune system. To test the theory the team repeated the experiment with antibiotics which depleted the mosquitos’ gut bacteria. The granulocyte count remained the same and the same numbers died as in the control group, supporting the theory. Vector Biologist Barillas-Mury says:
“Preventing the malaria is probably actually an indirect effect of the system preventing the bacteria being in the wrong place.”
Next they attempted to create a vaccine for mosquitoes:
… the researchers injected some of the insects with the serum of mosquitoes exposed to Plasmodium, but they removed the granulocytes from the serum. The mosquitoes that received the serum had less-intense Plasmodium infections and got them 40% less frequently when they were fed malaria-infected mouse blood, the team reports in the 10 September issue of Science. This shows that there is a factor in exposed mosquito blood that ramps up the production of granulocytes, says Barillas-Mury. If researchers could mimic that factor and place it in mosquito nets or spray it on the insects, they could immunize the bugs against infection and make them bad vectors for malaria, she says.
This discovery could be a fundamental step in eliminating malaria entirely from the mosquito.
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