Giving Compass' Take:

• Scientists in Italy have launched a large-scale experiment to genetically modify mosquitoes in efforts to try and eradicate malaria in Africa. 

• How can NGOs, governments, scientists and donors take a collaborative for approaching malaria and other global health issues?

• Here's an article from TIME Magazine on how to wipe out malaria for good. 

The mosquitoes have been gene-edited using the tool CRISPR, which allows scientists to make precise changes to strands of DNA. The mosquitoes carry a gene drive that will pass on certain traits to all of an organism's offspring and eventually impact the entire species. The specific modifications involved in this experiment impact female mosquitoes: They give them male mouths that prevent them from biting and spreading the malaria parasite, and they deform their reproductive organs so they can't lay eggs. As these genes spread throughout the population, more and more females will become sterile, drastically reducing or even killing off the entire population of malaria-spreading mosquitoes.

Given the unknowable but potentially disastrous impact of releasing gene-edited species into the natural world, such experiments must be done in controlled laboratory settings. Layers of security at this Italian lab prevent mosquitoes from getting out into the wild, but if one did manage to escape, it would not survive the local climate. The researchers hope to determine whether their "lethal modification" could be spread in the wild within six months to a year, but environmental experiments and political and social consultations will keep the mosquitoes' potential release at least five years away, researcher Tony Nolan, who helped develop the mosquitoes at Imperial College London, told NPR.

Read the full article on gene-edited mosquitoes by Kelley Czajka at Pacific Standard.