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Genetic code of bloodsucking tsetse fly is finally cracked
PHOTO | WILLIAM OERI A Tsetse Fly on a piece of wood at the Mt Kenya Forest.
What you need to know:
- Found only in Africa, bloodsucking tsetse flies are vectors for the parasites that cause trypanosomiasis, or nagana, an often-lethal disease that affects some three million animals every year.
- The FAO and IAEA’s Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture is currently helping 14 African countries to control tsetse populations using sterilisation and other methods, with the fly already eradicated in Zanzibar and progress being made in Ethiopia and Senegal.
Scientists said last Thursday that they had cracked the genetic code of the tsetse fly, potentially helping to tackle one of sub-Saharan Africa’s most devastating livestock diseases as well as human sleeping sickness.
“Decoding the tsetse fly’s DNA is a major scientific breakthrough,” said Kostas Bourtzis from a joint body of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation and the International Atomic Energy Agency, which sequenced the genome in a 10-year international effort.
