FALCONIUM

Dengue fever is one of the most dreaded mosquito carried viruses. Every year 2.5 billion people are threatened by dengue and up to 100 million get the virus. While most are able to recover after two weeks of intense sickness, an unfortunate few end dying a bloody death.
Dengue is carried and transmitted by mosquitoes. The virus uses mosquitoes as transportation and infects humans when mosquito's bite them. The dengue virus spreads from bug to bug so if a mosquito is not infected with dengue, it cannot in turn infect another mosquito, or more importantly, a human.
So, how does one go about blocking a virus? with a bacteria of course. Scientists recently found that mosquitoes carrying the Wolbachia do not contain dengue. For reasons scientists do not yet understand, the Wolbachia bacterium, which cannot be transmitted to humans, prevent the replication of dengue. Scientists found that when a male mosquito is infected with Wolbachia the embryos it creates with a non-infected female fail to develop while an infected female who mates with an uninfected male transmits the bacterium to the new mosquitoes, potentially allowing a the Wolbachia strain to spread to all mosquitoes. While the details involved in this biological process are yet to be unlocked the results are clear: by spreading Wolbachia, we can quarantine dengue. Sounds like a good trade off.
To read more visit: http://futurity.org/health-medicine/bacteria-block-spread-of-deadly-deng...

-Lauren Sweet