Scientists discover how mosquitoes can ‘sniff out’ humans

Whether you use citronella coil or long sleeves, the mosquito will always find a way to return to you.

Researchers have found a way for the insect to home in on humans.

Humans give off a fragrant cocktail of body odor, heat and carbon dioxide, which varies from person to person and mosquitoes use it to find their next meal. According to a study published in the science journal Cell, mosquitoes can pick up on smells through a variety of pathways.

Meg Younger is an assistant professor of biology at Boston University and one of the authors of the study.

Researchers at the Rockefeller University in New York were perplexed when mosquitoes were still able to find people to bite even though they had been removed from their genomes.

The team looked at the mosquito's ability to smell chemicals in the air and send a signal to the brain.

The central idea of olfaction is that only one type ofreceptor is expressed in each neuron. What we've seen is that the same neuron can respond to different odors.

The ability of mosquitoes to pick up human odors is unaffected by the loss of one or more receptors. The backup system could have evolved into a survival mechanism.

It is thought that the mosquito Aedes aegypti evolved to bite humans because humans are always close to the water. The drive to find humans is strong because we are the perfect meal.

Understanding how the mosquito brain processes human smell could be used to reduce the spread of mosquito-borne diseases.

One of the best ways to control mosquitoes is by trapping them in traps. We could use this knowledge to create blends that are more attractive to mosquitoes than we are. Younger said that we could develop repellants that target the olfactory system.

"We already knew that mosquitoes are hard-wired to bite humans, but this research tells us that their olfactory system is more complex than we thought." It could be very promising to use this new information.

"This is a remarkable discovery not only from a fundamental biology perspective, but also from a disease-control perspective, as it opens new paths for the development of novel tools to control mosquitoes, either to attract or repel them."