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A warning system that detects the whiny hum of mosquitoes could help save lives. The HumBug app has been created by researchers to alert people when mosquitoes are nearby. It runs on a cheap mobile phone and uses an algorithm to detect the high pitch buzz of mosquitoes in flight that are about 10cm away.

This is part of the Humbug Zooniverse citizen science project involving a team from Oxford University and Kew Gardens, London. The team, led by Stephen Roberts and Kathy Willis, are currently developing the app so that it can identify between malaria-carrying mosquitoes from the less dangerous species by detecting sound variation caused by wing size and shape.

Only 50 species out of 3,000 belong to the the genus Anopheles that carry the malaria parasite. This app could be a new strategy to protect people as well as to help researchers build up real-time maps of mosquito populations and identify species more easily when out in the field.

In recognition of this news and with World Malaria Day on 25th April, we share the recommended research on malaria and the investigations taking place to help prevent and control the disease, as well as sharing the current top three articles for the month and our Hidden Jewels. Click on the images for full access to the recommendations.

F1000Prime is a literature recommendation service. The service has a peer-nominated global Faculty of more than 8,000 of the world’s leading biomedical scientists and clinicians who select those articles they think are particularly interesting and important, and write recommendations explaining their selection. From the numerical ratings awarded, we have created a unique system for quantifying the importance of individual articles.

Top 3 article recommendations about malaria

“In this landmark work, the authors constructed the complete biosynthetic pathway of artemisinic acid by using A. annua artemisinic aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH1) and cytochrome CYB5, which provide a highly efficient biosynthetic route for artemisinic acid production, as the artemisinic acid titers can reach 25 g/L.” – Zixin Deng, Shanghai Jiaotong University, China, and Tiangang Liu, Wuhan University School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, China

“Why is sickle cell anemia protective against infection by Plasmodium falciparum? This thought-provoking study utilizing cryoelectron tomography by Cyrklaff et al. suggests the answer to a long-standing question lies in the parasite’s inability to properly hijack the host cytoskeleton for nutrient acquisition purposes.”- Mary Ann McDowell and Kristin Hager, University of Notre Dame, US 

“This observation suggests that vaccination protocols that circumvent the requirement for cross-presentation in vivo might provide a useful strategy for overcoming the immunosuppressive effects of systemic blood infections like malaria and certain viruses.”- Christian Engwerda, QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Australia 

Current Top 3 recommendations

“The authors found in this recommended study that the neuronal gene Arc encodes a protein that forms virus-like capsid structures. Moreover, the Arc protein was then shown to have similar properties as retroviral Gag proteins and to be released from neurons in extracellular vesicles.” – Patrick Küry, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany 

“In this comprehensive study, Wu et al. report that mammalian stem cells constitutively express a subset of genes that belongs to the family of antiviral interferon-stimulated genes (ISGs).” – Caetano Reis e Sousa and Annemarthe van der Veen, Francis Crick Institute, UK  

“This study elaborates at a very high level on the interrelation of the nervous and the immune system; while for many years, psycho-neuro-immunology as been hyped as a field, this is one of the few real breakthrough studies in the field. It has also direct clinical consequences given clinical developments.”- Kilian Eyerich, Technical University of Munich, Germany

Hidden Jewels

“This paper argues that the abundance of inter-node connections in the core allows it to generate a quick and robust response to the outside signals, whereas the responses of the peripheral network members are usually not that fast and more diverse.” – Michael Galperin, National Institutes of Health, US“This is an exciting study by the Burridge group that shows that the cell nucleus is dispensable for cell polarization and cell migration on 2D substrates, but that enucleated cells (cytoplasts) have significantly impaired migration in 3D collagen matrices.“- Jan Lammerding, Cornell University, US

“This is a compelling study, with elegant experiments that strongly support the authors’ conclusions. It is also interesting because it indirectly raises the question of whether mammalian cells are really so very different from yeast and plants.”- Margaret S Robinson, University of Cambridge, UK