How Do Mosquitoes Transmit Malaria?
Malaria is created by a sophisticated relationship between the mosquito and parasite. Only the female mosquito bites and drinks blood, and each time she does she transmits structures called sporozoites. These then travel around the human body to the liver, where they multiply and create a spore known as a merozoite. The merozoites enter the blood stream where they kill red blood cells, which are responsible for carrying oxygen throughout the body. Each time the blood cells disintegrate the merozoites multiply and infect other cells. It is these merozoites which are then drawn up by the next mosquito and carried in the insects stomach where they produce a new generation of parasite. If scientists are able to make the mosquito immune to the parasite, then they will be able stop the process by which the disease is transmitted.
