They were able to get a gene to spread to half the population in several different (captive) environments. That's good; other groups have developed some malaria-resistant mosquito strains. One can hope.
There's a slight fly in the ointment, though--minor compared to the hope of getting rid of malaria, but not entirely trivial: Unless the gene gives the mosquito an advantage, the gene will likely disappear. Better mosquitoes?
The group thinks they found a way around this; they use a (already known) gene that makes a chemical which, when the cell repair machinery starts up, cuts at that site on the DNA and uses the location as a template. So the gene always winds up present, no matter how the gametes divide. So we don't get super-mosquitoes. One can hope.
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