Dr. Lanzaro will be the guest editor for a Special Issue of Insects dedicated to advancing our understanding of mosquito population genetics—a cornerstone of vector control, evolutionary ecology, and emerging genetic technologies. This Special Issue will include original research, reviews, and perspectives that explore topics such as the following:

Claire Egan's paper "Growth and development of two predator species fed a diet of genetically engineered mosquitoes" was published today in Parasites & Vectors. Congratulations to Claire on her first published paper and to all co-authors.

A perspectives piece titled "Is Gene Drive Research Losing Traction?" by Dr. Lanzaro and Ana Kormos was published in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. 

Our film "Anopheles" has been selected to be screened at the Carmel International Film Festival in October. Congratulations to all those involved in the film's creation.

With Malaria being one of the killer diseases for children under 5 years and pregnant mothers in Africa, the 9th cohort of the Mandela Washington Fellowship, 2025 got an opportunity to interact with Vector Genetic Lab team to learn about the new tools to control and overview of the UCMI program.

Our 2025 interest seminars have now concluded for our undergraduate research program. They were very popular this year. We had over 150 interested students attend! It was standing room only on Friday. Interviews will start as early as next week after the applications close.

Over the weekend the 2024-25 VGL undergraduate researchers presented their work at the UC Davis Undergraduate Research, Scholarship and Creative Activities Conference. This year all our undergrads chose to give oral presentations! For more photos, view the VGL Events and Activities album.

A huge congratulations to:

Angela Hopkins
Fatima Batchelor
Bella Fajardo
Arnold Irungu
Aleena Bosky
Nikhitha Ravi
Joey Nguyen

Dr. Lanzaro and Ana Kormos will be presenting this week at the Johns Hopkins World Malaria Day Symposium: Building better mosquitoes.

Photographer Mark Scott Unger is at the Vector Genetics Lab this week taking more photos and videos of our mosquitoes, spiders, and fish.

Congratulations to Dr. Melina Campos, Marc Crepeau and Dr. Greg Lanzao on the publication of their long awaited G3 paper! You can read the paper here: Defining the genetics of the widely used G3 strain of the mosquito, Anopheles gambiae.