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esearchers at the Rockefeller University, in New York, were baffled when mosquitoes were somehow still able to find people to bite after having an entire family of human odour-sensing proteins removed from their genome.
The team then examined odour receptors in the antennae of mosquitoes, which bind to chemicals floating around in the environment and signal to the brain via neurons.
“We assumed that mosquitoes would follow the central dogma of olfaction, which is that only one type of receptor is expressed in each neuron,” said Younger. “Instead, what we’ve seen is that different receptors can respond to different odours in the same neuron.”
This means losing one or more receptors does not affect the ability of mosquitoes to pick up on human smells. This backup system could have evolved as a survival mechanism, the researchers say.
“The mosquito Aedes aegypti is specialised to bite humans, and it is believed that they evolved to do that because humans are always close to fresh water and mosquitoes lay their eggs in fresh water. We are basically the perfect meal, so the drive to find humans is extremely strong,” said Younger.
Ultimately, the researchers say, understanding how the mosquito brain processes human odour could be used to intervene in biting behaviour and reduce the spread of mosquito-borne diseases, such as malaria, dengue and yellow fever.
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Source: Scientists discover how mosquitoes can ‘sniff out’ humans | Animal behaviour | The Guardian
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