The insect uses three families of receptors; if one family of receptors is blocked, mosquitoes are still able to find humans.
The summer months in B.C. bring sun, a break from the rain, and the inevitable arrival of mosquito season.
Scientists are starting to understand the root of the problem and it lies in their complex sense of smell. Mosquitoes use their olfactory receptors to detect the plethora of chemicals that humans emit. Despite attempts by scientists to erase these receptors in the insect, mosquitoes are still able to locate humans.
“When we started to look around, we were shocked to discover that mosquitoes have a very strange way of organizing their receptors and neurons,” said Margo Herre, a scientist at Rockefeller University and one of the lead authors of the paper. “When we started looking, we were shocked to find that mosquitoes were not playing by the same rules that were previously described in fruit flies and mice.”
Olivia Goldman, another lead author on the paper, says that more research needs to be done to understand if the different families of receptors detect different smells or if their functions overlap.
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