A recent research has found that if a stain called ‘Wolbachia’ is inserted in mosquitoes, it will not kill them but kill the production of dengue viruses in the insects. Every year, around 50 to 100 million people die to dengue fever virus.

The aim of the researchers in not to kill the virus carrier Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, instead they want to kill the dengue virus in the mosquitoes. Scott O'Neill of Australia’s Monash University and colleagues has studied Wolbachia stain also known as wMel that infected the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster for decades.

The stain infects almost all the flies in the world, but the important feature that the researchers noticed about the stain is that it restrained certain virus infections in the flies. The researchers believed that the stain will also block the viruses in the mosquitoes spreading dengue.

Therefore, they cultured the bacterium from Drosophila to the mosquito cell lines for a few years so that the mosquitoes become accustomed to the environment, then the cells were injected in the embryos of Aedes egyptii which further transferred into female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes from breeding.

The researchers found that the stain affected the ovaries of the mosquito and the Wolbachia spread was spread successfully. Finally, the mosquitoes were fed with blood infected with dengue virus and the results showed a 1500 times drop in the dengue genetic material in the Mel-infected mosquitoes.