Mosquitoes have neuronal fail-safes to make sure they can always smell humans
Female mosquitoes detect a distinctive concoction of body scents humans release into the atmosphere while they are searching for a human to bite. The mosquitoes' antennae are then stimulated by these scents. To make people invisible to mosquitoes, researchers have attempted eliminating these receptors. However, mosquitoes still manage to bite us despite having an entire family of odor-sensing receptors removed from their genome. Now, a team of researchers revealed that mosquitoes have evolved redundant fail-safes in their olfactory system that make sure they can always perceive our odors, according to a study published in the journal Cell on August 18. According to main author of the study Margo Herre, a professor at Rockefeller University, "mosquitoes are defying all of our beloved norms of how animals sense things." An olfactory neuron in the majority of animals can only recognize one kind of odor. Leslie Vosshall, a professor at Rockefeller University and senior author...