Genetically modified mosquitoes could prevent one million deaths

Genetically modified mosquitoes could reduce the estimated one million deaths each year caused by malaria.

An international team of scientists has developed a mosquito strain that produces mostly male offspring, leaving out the females responsible for spreading the disease.

The new strain produces more than 95 per cent males and causes a collapse in numbers because there are too few females.

A team of UK, Italian and US researchers describes this "synthetic sex distortion system" in a paper published yesterday in the journal Nature Communications.