Do mosquitoes allow for DNA transfer between unrelated species?
In general foreign materials may be transferred from one organism to another in a mosquito, as is obviously the case with malaria, but for DNA to make it from inside the cells of one organism to inside the cells of another organism is exceedingly rare. In general DNAses and RNAses are present anywhere around living cells so when DNA is released it is quickly chewed up into useless fragments. Most likely this happens readily inside the digestive tract of a mosqito (Evolutionarily this makes sense as it would be extremely bad if a mosquito started absorbing genes from any of the organisms it was feeding off of!). Furthermore, DNA is an enormous charged molecule and does not easily pass through a cellular membrane. In a laboratory setting, DNA may be transferred into organisms with the help of electroporation or "gene guns" but this requires large amounts of identical genes to be effectively forced into cells, and even then, efficiencies of gene transfer are low. In short, no, it would be effectively impossible for a gene to be transferred from one organism to another by a mosquito. However, if a virus gets transferred by the mosquito...