Scientists have produced a complete genetic blueprint of the southern house mosquito, one of the most widespread disease carriers of the mosquito family. It’s the third mosquito genome to be fully sequenced and may help scientists develop more effective pesticides against specific species and diseases.
“Now we have one representative of [each of] the three major groups of disease-carrying mosquitoes,” says study coauthor Peter Arensburger of the University of California, Riverside. Sequenced in 2002, the African Anopheles gambiae carries malaria. Aedes aegypti, sequenced in 2007, lives in subtropical and tropical regions and carries yellow and Dengue fevers.