Sorry mosquitoes, but scientists have decided your time is up

Macro close up of mosquito drinking blood on skin
On the scale of popularity, mosquitoes aren’t that high among their fellow insects.

Their bites hurt, they spread disease and they’re incredibly annoying, especially when you’re trying to sleep.

And their mischief hasn’t gone unnoticed, with scientists now set on wiping out the critters responsible for spreading malaria.

New genes have been introduced to the Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes – the ones which spread the disease across sub-Saharan Africa – that will cause infertility in female offspring.

Take that.

A team at Imperial College London, led by molecular biologist Tony Nolan and vector biologist Andrea Crisanti, say the gene will lead to infertility, and will spread quickly among the population.

Females with two copies of the gene will not be able to breed, while others will pass the gene down to their offspring, like a genetic timebomb.

In tests, the journal Nature reports, 75 per cent of mosquitoes harboured the mutations after four generations.

But anyone who’s seen the Jurassic Park films is well versed in the dangers of tampering with nature.

However Prof Nolan told the BBC that the work can be done without a major impact on ecosystems.

He said: ‘There are roughly 3,400 different species of mosquitoes worldwide and, while Anopheles gambiae is an important carrier of malaria, it is only one of around 800 species of mosquito in Africa, so suppressing it in certain areas should not significantly impact the local ecosystem.’

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