Mosquitoes have neurons with built-in smell receptors and even back-up abilities that allow them to smell and target humans to bite, according to scientists at Rockefeller University, New York City.
What to Know:
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Neurons in some mosquitoes’ antennae and brains have exceptionally elaborate gear that can smell nearby humans, and the insects are intensely attracted to body odor and carbon dioxide.
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Mosquitoes detect human odors using ionotropic chemosensory receptors encoded by three large multi-gene families, and even genetic mutations that disrupt the olfactory system do little to deter their attraction to humans.
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Most animals have an olfactory neuron that is only responsible for detecting one type of odor, but mosquitoes seem to have evolved to have redundant fail-safes in their system of smell that make sure they can always smell human scents if one aspect of their system fails.
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Neurons in mosquitoes are not only stimulated by the human odor known as 1-octen-3-ol but by amines, another type of chemical mosquitoes use to look for humans.
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Scientists have tried deleting some receptors in attempts to make humans undetectable to mosquitoes, but the 1-octen-3-ol and amine receptors appear to work together so that all human-related odors activate the human-detecting part of the mosquito brain even if some of the receptors are lost.
This is a summary of the article “Non-canonical odor coding in the mosquito,” published in Cell on July 24, 2022. The full article can be found on cell.com.
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