The fate of society rests in part on how humans navigate their complicated relationship with insects – trying to save “good” insects and control “bad” ones. Some insects, like mosquitoes, bite people ...

A hereditary defect created with CRISPR could wipe out cattle-killing pests that cost the country millions. On a warm, sunny day in Montevideo, Uruguay, the air is smogless and crisp. Inside a highly ...

“I’m very relieved,” Andrea Crisanti, a molecular parasitologist at Imperial College London who works with gene drives, told Nature. “It would have been a disaster for developing the technology.” By ...

Gene drives are a promising technology for controlling the populations of disease-bearing mosquitos by using their own genes against them. But a number of roadblocks still stand in the way. The ...

They buzz, they bite, and they cause some of the deadliest diseases known to humanity. Mosquitoes are perhaps the planet’s most universally reviled animals. If we could zap them off the face of the ...

On World Mosquito Day, Target Malaria, a not-for-profit research consortium, has called for more investment in technology, talent and partnerships to defeat malaria, a disease that kills over half a ...

Malaria remains a daily threat across Africa. In 2023 alone, the continent accounted for 95% of the world’s 597,000 malaria-related deaths. The most vulnerable are our children and pregnant women.

When it comes to wiping out whole species or permanently altering them, however, it’s a very new ball game. The big new issues regarding Gene Drive are a whole new league. Imagine being able to wipe ...

A gene drive – a bit of DNA that cheats evolution and can spread even if harmful – has been successfully tested in a plant for the first time. The approach could be used to wipe out invasive plants ...