FIU – Frankenskeeter: Professor genetically modifies mosquitoes

Matthew DeGennaro is determined to stop the world’s deadliest animal.

Accounting for as many as 725,000 deaths worldwide every year, mosquitoes transmit a variety of infectious diseases including malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever, West Nile virus and Zika. While there are thousands of species of mosquitoes, only a small number are known to transmit diseases. As fate would have it, the carriers of disease happen to be the species that prefer the taste of humans. The Aedes aegypti mosquito is among those, a spreader of yellow fever, dengue and Zika. DeGennaro spends his days surrounded by them, trying to better understand why they hunt people and how he might stop them from biting us.