On Mar. 15, 2023, scientists at Texas A&M announced that a research study: ‘RNA interference is essential to modulating the pathogenesis of mosquito-borne viruses in the yellow fever mosquito Aedes aegypti,’ published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that the mosquito vector species Aedes aegypti becomes acutely susceptible to disease when the protective immune pathway is disabled.

Now that we know how important the mosquito’s immune response is in the transmission of viral pathogens, can we exploit that information to control disease in humans and animals?

For example, in other work occurring in the laboratory, we are collaborating with George Dimopoulos’ lab at Johns Hopkins University to see if we can augment or reinforce the mosquito’s immune response to make insects that are resistant to infection with these pathogens.