Now researchers say they have found the mechanism behind the insect’s ability to inhabit humans. Humans give off an aromatic cocktail of body odor, heat, and carbon dioxide that varies from person to person, and mosquitoes use it to locate their next meal. While most animals have a specific set of neurons that detect each type of odor, mosquitoes can pick up odors through several different pathways, suggests the study, which is published in the scientific journal Cell. “We found that there is a real difference in the way mosquitoes encode the odors they encounter compared to what we’ve learned from other animals,” said Meg Younger, an assistant professor of biology at Boston University and one of the study’s lead authors. Researchers at Rockefeller University in New York were baffled when mosquitoes were somehow still able to find humans to bite after removing an entire family of human odor-detecting proteins from their genomes. Next, the team looked at odor receptors on the mosquitoes’ antennae, which bind to chemicals floating in the environment and send a signal to the brain via neurons. “We hypothesized that mosquitoes would follow the central dogma of olfaction, which is that only one type of receptor is expressed in each neuron,” Younger said. “Instead, what we’ve seen is that different receptors can respond to different odors in the same neuron.” This means that the loss of one or more receptors does not affect the mosquitoes’ ability to perceive human odors. This backup system could have evolved as a survival mechanism, the researchers say. “The Aedes aegypti mosquito is specialized in biting humans and it is thought that they evolved to do this because humans are always near fresh water and mosquitoes lay their eggs in fresh water. We’re basically the perfect meal, so trying to find people is extremely powerful,” Younger said. Ultimately, the researchers say, understanding how mosquito brains process human odor could be used to intervene in biting behavior and reduce the spread of mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue fever and yellow fever. “An important mosquito control strategy is to attract them to traps to remove them from the biting population. If we could use this knowledge to understand how human odor is represented in mosquito antennae and brains, we could develop mixtures that are more attractive to mosquitoes than we are. We could also develop repellents that target the receptors and neurons that detect human odor,” Younger said. Dr Olena Riabinina, from the Insect Neuro Lab at Durham University, who was not involved in the research, said: “We already knew that mosquitoes are hard-wired to bite humans, but this research tells us that their olfactory system is different and more complex than we thought. Interventions based on this new information could be very promising.” Dr Marta Andres Miguel, from University College London, who was also not involved, said: “This is a remarkable discovery not only from a fundamental biology perspective, but also from a disease control perspective as it opens up new avenues for developing new tools to control mosquitoes, either to attract them to traps or to repel them and avoid biting humans.”
title: “Scientists Discover How Mosquitoes Can Smell People Animal Behavior Klmat” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-09” author: “Maria Steele”
Now researchers say they have found the mechanism behind the insect’s ability to inhabit humans. Humans give off an aromatic cocktail of body odor, heat, and carbon dioxide that varies from person to person, and mosquitoes use it to locate their next meal. While most animals have a specific set of neurons that detect each type of odor, mosquitoes can pick up odors through several different pathways, suggests the study, which is published in the scientific journal Cell. “We found that there is a real difference in the way mosquitoes encode the odors they encounter compared to what we’ve learned from other animals,” said Meg Younger, an assistant professor of biology at Boston University and one of the study’s lead authors. Researchers at Rockefeller University in New York were baffled when mosquitoes were somehow still able to find humans to bite after removing an entire family of human odor-detecting proteins from their genomes. Next, the team looked at odor receptors on the mosquitoes’ antennae, which bind to chemicals floating in the environment and send a signal to the brain via neurons. “We hypothesized that mosquitoes would follow the central dogma of olfaction, which is that only one type of receptor is expressed in each neuron,” Younger said. “Instead, what we’ve seen is that different receptors can respond to different odors in the same neuron.” This means that the loss of one or more receptors does not affect the mosquitoes’ ability to perceive human odors. This backup system could have evolved as a survival mechanism, the researchers say. “The Aedes aegypti mosquito is specialized in biting humans and it is thought that they evolved to do this because humans are always near fresh water and mosquitoes lay their eggs in fresh water. We’re basically the perfect meal, so trying to find people is extremely powerful,” Younger said. Ultimately, the researchers say, understanding how mosquito brains process human odor could be used to intervene in biting behavior and reduce the spread of mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue fever and yellow fever. “An important mosquito control strategy is to attract them to traps to remove them from the biting population. If we could use this knowledge to understand how human odor is represented in mosquito antennae and brains, we could develop mixtures that are more attractive to mosquitoes than we are. We could also develop repellents that target the receptors and neurons that detect human odor,” Younger said. Dr Olena Riabinina, from the Insect Neuro Lab at Durham University, who was not involved in the research, said: “We already knew that mosquitoes are hard-wired to bite humans, but this research tells us that their olfactory system is different and more complex than we thought. Interventions based on this new information could be very promising.” Dr Marta Andres Miguel, from University College London, who was also not involved, said: “This is a remarkable discovery not only from a fundamental biology perspective, but also from a disease control perspective as it opens up new avenues for developing new tools to control mosquitoes, either to attract them to traps or to repel them and avoid biting humans.”
title: “Scientists Discover How Mosquitoes Can Smell People Animal Behavior Klmat” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-17” author: “Lesley Eshom”
Now researchers say they have found the mechanism behind the insect’s ability to inhabit humans. Humans give off an aromatic cocktail of body odor, heat, and carbon dioxide that varies from person to person, and mosquitoes use it to locate their next meal. While most animals have a specific set of neurons that detect each type of odor, mosquitoes can pick up odors through several different pathways, suggests the study, which is published in the scientific journal Cell. “We found that there is a real difference in the way mosquitoes encode the odors they encounter compared to what we’ve learned from other animals,” said Meg Younger, an assistant professor of biology at Boston University and one of the study’s lead authors. Researchers at Rockefeller University in New York were baffled when mosquitoes were somehow still able to find humans to bite after removing an entire family of human odor-detecting proteins from their genomes. Next, the team looked at odor receptors on the mosquitoes’ antennae, which bind to chemicals floating in the environment and send a signal to the brain via neurons. “We hypothesized that mosquitoes would follow the central dogma of olfaction, which is that only one type of receptor is expressed in each neuron,” Younger said. “Instead, what we’ve seen is that different receptors can respond to different odors in the same neuron.” This means that the loss of one or more receptors does not affect the mosquitoes’ ability to perceive human odors. This backup system could have evolved as a survival mechanism, the researchers say. “The Aedes aegypti mosquito is specialized in biting humans and it is thought that they evolved to do this because humans are always near fresh water and mosquitoes lay their eggs in fresh water. We’re basically the perfect meal, so trying to find people is extremely powerful,” Younger said. Ultimately, the researchers say, understanding how mosquito brains process human odor could be used to intervene in biting behavior and reduce the spread of mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue fever and yellow fever. “An important mosquito control strategy is to attract them to traps to remove them from the biting population. If we could use this knowledge to understand how human odor is represented in mosquito antennae and brains, we could develop mixtures that are more attractive to mosquitoes than we are. We could also develop repellents that target the receptors and neurons that detect human odor,” Younger said. Dr Olena Riabinina, from the Insect Neuro Lab at Durham University, who was not involved in the research, said: “We already knew that mosquitoes are hard-wired to bite humans, but this research tells us that their olfactory system is different and more complex than we thought. Interventions based on this new information could be very promising.” Dr Marta Andres Miguel, from University College London, who was also not involved, said: “This is a remarkable discovery not only from a fundamental biology perspective, but also from a disease control perspective as it opens up new avenues for developing new tools to control mosquitoes, either to attract them to traps or to repel them and avoid biting humans.”
title: “Scientists Discover How Mosquitoes Can Smell People Animal Behavior Klmat” ShowToc: true date: “2022-10-30” author: “Bradley Tucker”
Now researchers say they have found the mechanism behind the insect’s ability to inhabit humans. Humans give off an aromatic cocktail of body odor, heat, and carbon dioxide that varies from person to person, and mosquitoes use it to locate their next meal. While most animals have a specific set of neurons that detect each type of odor, mosquitoes can pick up odors through several different pathways, suggests the study, which is published in the scientific journal Cell. “We found that there is a real difference in the way mosquitoes encode the odors they encounter compared to what we’ve learned from other animals,” said Meg Younger, an assistant professor of biology at Boston University and one of the study’s lead authors. Researchers at Rockefeller University in New York were baffled when mosquitoes were somehow still able to find humans to bite after removing an entire family of human odor-detecting proteins from their genomes. Next, the team looked at odor receptors on the mosquitoes’ antennae, which bind to chemicals floating in the environment and send a signal to the brain via neurons. “We hypothesized that mosquitoes would follow the central dogma of olfaction, which is that only one type of receptor is expressed in each neuron,” Younger said. “Instead, what we’ve seen is that different receptors can respond to different odors in the same neuron.” This means that the loss of one or more receptors does not affect the mosquitoes’ ability to perceive human odors. This backup system could have evolved as a survival mechanism, the researchers say. “The Aedes aegypti mosquito is specialized in biting humans and it is thought that they evolved to do this because humans are always near fresh water and mosquitoes lay their eggs in fresh water. We’re basically the perfect meal, so trying to find people is extremely powerful,” Younger said. Ultimately, the researchers say, understanding how mosquito brains process human odor could be used to intervene in biting behavior and reduce the spread of mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue fever and yellow fever. “An important mosquito control strategy is to attract them to traps to remove them from the biting population. If we could use this knowledge to understand how human odor is represented in mosquito antennae and brains, we could develop mixtures that are more attractive to mosquitoes than we are. We could also develop repellents that target the receptors and neurons that detect human odor,” Younger said. Dr Olena Riabinina, from the Insect Neuro Lab at Durham University, who was not involved in the research, said: “We already knew that mosquitoes are hard-wired to bite humans, but this research tells us that their olfactory system is different and more complex than we thought. Interventions based on this new information could be very promising.” Dr Marta Andres Miguel, from University College London, who was also not involved, said: “This is a remarkable discovery not only from a fundamental biology perspective, but also from a disease control perspective as it opens up new avenues for developing new tools to control mosquitoes, either to attract them to traps or to repel them and avoid biting humans.”
title: “Scientists Discover How Mosquitoes Can Smell People Animal Behavior Klmat” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-11” author: “Christal Blow”
Now researchers say they have found the mechanism behind the insect’s ability to inhabit humans. Humans give off an aromatic cocktail of body odor, heat, and carbon dioxide that varies from person to person, and mosquitoes use it to locate their next meal. While most animals have a specific set of neurons that detect each type of odor, mosquitoes can pick up odors through several different pathways, suggests the study, which is published in the scientific journal Cell. “We found that there is a real difference in the way mosquitoes encode the odors they encounter compared to what we’ve learned from other animals,” said Meg Younger, an assistant professor of biology at Boston University and one of the study’s lead authors. Researchers at Rockefeller University in New York were baffled when mosquitoes were somehow still able to find humans to bite after removing an entire family of human odor-detecting proteins from their genomes. Next, the team looked at odor receptors on the mosquitoes’ antennae, which bind to chemicals floating in the environment and send a signal to the brain via neurons. “We hypothesized that mosquitoes would follow the central dogma of olfaction, which is that only one type of receptor is expressed in each neuron,” Younger said. “Instead, what we’ve seen is that different receptors can respond to different odors in the same neuron.” This means that the loss of one or more receptors does not affect the mosquitoes’ ability to perceive human odors. This backup system could have evolved as a survival mechanism, the researchers say. “The Aedes aegypti mosquito is specialized in biting humans and it is thought that they evolved to do this because humans are always near fresh water and mosquitoes lay their eggs in fresh water. We’re basically the perfect meal, so trying to find people is extremely powerful,” Younger said. Ultimately, the researchers say, understanding how mosquito brains process human odor could be used to intervene in biting behavior and reduce the spread of mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue fever and yellow fever. “An important mosquito control strategy is to attract them to traps to remove them from the biting population. If we could use this knowledge to understand how human odor is represented in mosquito antennae and brains, we could develop mixtures that are more attractive to mosquitoes than we are. We could also develop repellents that target the receptors and neurons that detect human odor,” Younger said. Dr Olena Riabinina, from the Insect Neuro Lab at Durham University, who was not involved in the research, said: “We already knew that mosquitoes are hard-wired to bite humans, but this research tells us that their olfactory system is different and more complex than we thought. Interventions based on this new information could be very promising.” Dr Marta Andres Miguel, from University College London, who was also not involved, said: “This is a remarkable discovery not only from a fundamental biology perspective, but also from a disease control perspective as it opens up new avenues for developing new tools to control mosquitoes, either to attract them to traps or to repel them and avoid biting humans.”
