The mosquito-killing capabilities of fungi can in principle be deployed in the fight against malaria. But long experience of unfulfilled hopes in this complex arena shows the need to proceed cautiously. Many malaria control measures have centred on the mosquito vector of the Plasmodium parasite that causes the disease. Female mosquitoes transmit Plasmodium from human to human after feeding on the blood of an infected person — hence the age-old use of bednets, and the more recent attempts to genetically manipulate mosquitoes to make them resistant to parasite infection, or to reduce mosquito populations with insecticides. Two papers in Science, by Blanford et al.1 and Scholte et al.2, describe another approach — the deployment of mosquito-killing fungi.
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