Insects like mosquitoes carry diseases and spread them throughout populations. Malaria is one of many diseases that mosquitoes transmit, and it kills hundreds of thousands of people every year. Dr. Sandra Hope in the Department of Microbiology & Molecular Biology and Dr. Brian Jensen in the Department of Mechanical Engineering are seeking to curb this problem by stopping a mosquito's ability to carry malaria.
The project takes advantage of an edited gene that can be inserted into the insect’s DNA to remove its ability to carry the disease. Hope, Jensen, and their team are collaborating with the University of Utah. The gene was created at the University of Utah and the insertion technique is being created at BYU. Hope and Jensen have had success in the past with inserting genes into mice using electricity-mediated gene insertion, but the insects provide an interesting challenge.
First, Hope and her students have to breed beetles to test the insertion techniques since beetles are more manageable test insects than mosquitoes. Then they need to create a nano-injection to accommodate the insect’s small size. The nano-injection does not use liquid, but rather a solid needle that holds a charge attracting the DNA before releasing it into the mosquito or beetle egg. The DNA includes a gene to express a red fluorescent protein to verify the DNA alteration is present. Once they can prove the injection works in the beetles, Hope will move on to mosquitos. Eventually, they hope to be able to use this technique to help mitigate the spread of other vector-borne diseases carried by insects.
While the project is still in early testing phases and some insects don’t survive the injection, Hope anticipates successful results. “This is what science is,” she said. “It’s learning new things, finding out new ways to do things, and then finding there’s going to be an even better way. We can't know unless we start applying.”
Jensen and his student, Kai Jeffrey (Mechanical Engineering ’24), have enjoyed the inter-university and inter-college collaboration in designing the electrical circuit and mechanical system needed for this study. “I think it's really been exciting to see how we can combine the biology and the engineering expertise,” Jensen said. “It's really exciting to work with something that has not been engineered by man and unlock some of the secrets.”
Several life sciences students have also been involved in this project, and they have learned a variety of techniques throughout the different stages of the research process. Abigail Wallace (MMBIO ’24) shared, “I was in charge of giving the beetles clean habitats, making sure that they had containers to breathe in, and have since been working with bacteria and DNA.” Eve Nagareda (MMBIO ’26) manages the fluorescent microscope and egg dissection to ensure larvae develop properly. “When you're working with DNA with all these different factors involved, it's something that involves a lot of control and understanding of what could affect the experiment as a whole,” she said.
As the project progresses, Hope and her colleagues remain optimistic about the potential impact of their work. The success of this innovative gene-editing technique could pave the way for a world where diseases like malaria and dengue are no longer transmitted by insects.
