Malarial Evolution

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101020151324.htm

Recently, scientists at the Imperial College London have discovered something that could potentially be very dangerous to us; the evolution of mosquitoes. What the scary thing is, the mosquitoes that are evolving are mosquitoes that carry malaria. In the branch of Division of Cell and Molecular Biology at the Imperial College London, scientists have been doing tests to see how exactly the mosquitoes are evolving. The tests they performed were to analyze the genomes of the two strains, M and S, of the malarial mosquito. The first test resulted in findings that the two strains are far different than each other; and in the second test, they studied individual mosquitoes from the M and S strains, and also from a strain called Bamako, and found over 400,000 things that were different in their genetics, so that they could see how these mosquitoes are evolving. The second study explained that the two strains of mosquitoes are evolving in different ways, so with this, scientists are worried and have noted that the bugs are evolving quicker than they once thought.

I saw this article on Science Daily, and thought to myself, 'Oh, this would be cool to read!' So, I began to read and was quickly frightened. Even though I don't know much about malaria, I know enough that it's very harmful, and that it causes one of every five deaths in people; mainly children. But since the bugs are evolving quicker than what scientists had originally thought, I was wondering to myself, 'Are the mosquitoes going to carry the malaria over here? How badly will this affect America and its citizens?' Although, what's reassuring to me, is that the scientists over in London are taking action and seeing how they can control the population, and although the fact that the bugs are evolving is intimidating, with scientists taking action I'm not as worried as I would be if they just neglected the fact.