Studies have shown that mosquitoes can smell humans without olfactory receptors
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Studies have shown that mosquitoes can smell humans without olfactory receptors |
A new report in The Guardian reveals that researchers have found mechanisms that allow insects to "sniff out" humans among all other animals.
Humans emit an aromatic cocktail of body odor, heat, and carbon dioxide, and this combination is different for different people. This smell is used by mosquitoes, but in their case, they can smell in different ways.
The researchers stumbled upon it when they were surprised that mosquitoes could find and bite humans after removing an entire family of human odor-sensitive proteins from their genomes.
The researchers then looked at scent receptors on the mosquito's antennae, which fuse with chemicals floating in the environment and send signals to the brain via neurons.
Meg Younger, an assistant professor of biology at Boston University and lead author of the study, explained: "We assumed that mosquitoes would follow the central dogma of smell, which is that each neuron expresses only one type of receptor. What instead? We found that different receptors on the same neuron were different. It can respond to odors."
This indicates that even after losing one or more receptors, the mosquito's ability to smell humans is not affected. The researchers say it could be a.
survival mechanism
Younger added: "Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are specialized to bite humans, and it's thought they evolved to do this because humans are always around fresh water and mosquitoes lay their eggs in fresh water. We're basically the perfect food, so so the urge to find humans is extremely strong. "drink."
According to Younger, the way they track and bite humans can help reduce the spread of mosquito-borne diseases. One of the strategies she suggests is trapping them to keep them away from the population that bites them.
"If we can use knowledge about how human odors are represented on mosquito antennae and brains, we can create compounds that are more attractive to mosquitoes than we are. We can also create repellents that target receptors and neurons that detect human scents. Young concluded.