Mosquitoes are often referred to as the deadliest animals on Earth because of the devastating pathogens they are able to transmit when females bite and then feed on blood from human hosts (male mosquitoes don’t bite). In 2015 alone there were an estimated 212 million cases of malaria, resulting in 429,000 deaths (1). Approximately one-third of Earth’s population is considered at risk for infection by the dengue virus (2). Furthermore, the rapid emergence and global spread of mosquito-borne viruses, such as West Nile, Zika, and chikungunya, are of increasing public health concern (3,4). Because effective vaccines and drug therapies are not available for the majority of these mosquito-borne pathogens, efforts to reduce disease transmission have traditionally focused on suppressing or eliminating the mosquito vector, usually by reducing larval habitats (source reduction) or applying insecticides. However, the effectiveness of these traditional approaches is limited by the proliferation of man-made habitats (e.g., discarded tires and cisterns), the rapid geographic spread of vector species associated with human commerce and travel, and the evolution of insecticide resistance. Novel approaches to control are desperately needed. Recently, a variety of exciting strategies to disrupt disease transmission have emerged based on genetic modification of vectors or infection of vectors with bacterial symbionts (5,6). These strategies seek to either suppress vector populations to sufficiently low numbers that pathogen transmission cannot be sustained (population suppression), or to introduce and spread genetic modifications or bacterial symbiont infections through natural populations so the mosquitoes are incapable of transmitting pathogens (population replacement). Current population replacement strategies focus on preventing the mosquito from transmitting a pathogen once it has already taken a bite and ingested blood. In PNAS, Bradshaw et al. (7) establish the foundation of an intriguing alternative approach based on the potent logic that mosquitoes that don’t …

中文翻译：

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蚊子叮咬的分子途径

蚊子通常被称为地球上最致命的动物，因为它们具有毁灭性的病原体，当雌性叮咬后便能够传播，然后以人类宿主的血液为食（雄性蚊子不咬）。仅在2015年，估计就有2.12亿疟疾病例，导致429,000例死亡（1）。大约三分之一的地球人口被认为有登革热病毒感染的危险（2）。此外，诸如西尼罗河，寨卡病毒和基孔肯雅热等蚊媒病毒的迅速出现和在全球范围内的传播日益引起人们对公共卫生的关注（3,4）。由于大多数蚊子传播的病原体均无法获得有效的疫苗和药物疗法，因此减少疾病传播的努力传统上集中在抑制或消除蚊子媒介上，通常通过减少幼虫栖息地（减少源头）或使用杀虫剂来实现。但是，这些传统方法的有效性受到人造栖息地（例如废弃的轮胎和水箱）的扩散，与人类贸易和旅行有关的媒介物种在地理上的快速传播以及对杀虫剂的抗性的限制。迫切需要新颖的控制方法。近来，基于载体的基因修饰或细菌共生体感染载体，出现了许多令人激动的破坏疾病传播的策略（5,6）。这些策略试图将媒介种群抑制到足够低的数量，以致病原体无法持续传播（种群抑制），或通过自然种群引入和传播遗传修饰或细菌共生感染，从而使蚊子无法传播病原体（种群替代）。当前的种群替代策略着重于防止蚊子叮咬并摄入血液后传播病原体。在PNAS中，Bradshaw等人。（7）建立有效的替代方法的基础，该方法基于蚊子不会...的强大逻辑。