Malaria: on the agenda;: Richard Butler reveals the secrets of the world's biggest killer. (News Feature).(research on new methods to combat malaria)

Malaria is one of the world's biggest killers. It infects up to half a billion people per year. and according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), a child dies every 30 seconds as a result of the disease.

But new methods to fight malaria are likely, with the publication of the entire genetic sequence of both the malaria parasite and the mosquito that spreads it.

An international team of scientists, led by Robert Holt at Celera Genomics, Maryland. has published the genetic sequence of the mosquito Anopheles gambiae in the journal Science. A simultaneous publication in the journal Nature, by a group of researchers from the Institute of Genomic Research in Maryland and the UK-based Sanger Institute, describe the entire genome of Plasmodium falciparum.

'We now have the genomes of all three organisms involved in the disease. This is the first time this has ever happened,' says Fotis Kafatos, director of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, where much of the mosquito research was carried out. Details of the human genome were published two years ago.

Spread

'Of the four types of malaria that infect humans, only one is likely to …