Only the female mosquito is able to carry and transmit the malaria parasite as her diet requires blood for the nutritional demand of producing young. The male however feeds on nectar, so research is looking at this diversity in mosquito sex development genes for clues to combat this disease.
The EU-funded VECTRAP (Sex determination pathway in the malaria vector Anopheles gambiae) project has looked at the genes activated in male and female A. gambiae mosquitoes during development and sex differentiation. Using high-throughput sequencing, bioinformatics, molecular biology and mosquito genetic manipulation, the research team looked for genes that are differentially transcribed in sex determination.
Further details: Sex determination genes of the mosquito