A Large-Scale Artificial Feeding Technique for Infecting Mosquitoes and its Application to Screening Antimalarial Chemicals1

Abstract

During development of mass-screening methods for potential antimalarial compounds in a mosquito test system (Gerberg, Richard & Poole, 1966, Mosquito News 26: 359–63), a membrane-feeding technique was employed to infect large numbers of Aedes aegypti (L.) with Plasmodium gallinaceum Brumpt. Drugs of known antimalarial activity were fed to these infected mosquitoes. The objectives of this paper are to describe the methods and equipment employed to infect large numbers of A. aegypti with P. gallinaceum, and to present data from tests of known antimalarial compounds to illustrate the feasibility of using membrane-feeding techniques for mass-screening of potential antimalarial chemicals.