Do we need mosquitos? Are these bloodsuckers and transmitters of diseases important for biodiversity? If not eradicate or genetically modify! High time for humans to sting back! 😄
This new research suggests, if humans were to smell more like animals, they might get less hit by certain mosquitoes. Or the research results artifacts of some sort, because human subjects had not showered for several days? 😄
"Two odorants, called decanal and undecanal, are reminiscent of orange peel and are perhaps best known for their use in Chanel No°5 perfume. They are also the compounds that help mosquitoes home in on humans, a new study finds. ...
Using CRISPR gene editing, the team generated mosquitoes that express the calcium sensor GCaMP6f in olfactory sensory neurons. When neurons fire and calcium levels increase, the sensor is activated and fluoresces—something that was previously only possible in model organisms such as mice. ...
Using CRISPR gene editing, the team generated mosquitoes that express the calcium sensor GCaMP6f in olfactory sensory neurons. When neurons fire and calcium levels increase, the sensor is activated and fluoresces—something that was previously only possible in model organisms such as mice. ...
The researchers then exposed the engineered mosquitoes to human, rat, and sheep odors, using a newly developed method that Christopher Potter, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who was not involved in the study, describes as an “impressive advancement.” In the set-up, human volunteers who hadn’t showered for a few days lay down in a Teflon bag. The air from the bags was collected and puffed at the mosquitoes through several small pipes. ...."
From the abstract:
"A globally invasive form of the mosquito Aedes aegypti specializes in biting humans, making it an efficient disease vector. Host-seeking female mosquitoes strongly prefer human odour over the odour of animals, but exactly how they distinguish between the two is not known. Vertebrate odours are complex blends of volatile chemicals with many shared components, making discrimination an interesting sensory coding challenge. Here we show that human and animal odours evoke activity in distinct combinations of olfactory glomeruli within the Ae. aegypti antennal lobe. One glomerulus in particular is strongly activated by human odour but responds weakly, or not at all, to animal odour. This human-sensitive glomerulus is selectively tuned to the long-chain aldehydes decanal and undecanal, which we show are consistently enriched in human odour and which probably originate from unique human skin lipids. Using synthetic blends, we further demonstrate that signalling in the human-sensitive glomerulus significantly enhances long-range host-seeking behaviour in a wind tunnel, recapitulating preference for human over animal odours. Our research suggests that animal brains may distil complex odour stimuli of innate biological relevance into simple neural codes and reveals targets for the design of next-generation mosquito-control strategies."
Mosquito brains encode unique features of human odour to drive host seeking (no public access, but article above contains link to PDF file)
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