Jakarta – Mosquitoes have their own way of detecting whose blood is good to eat. Want to know how mosquitoes do it? Check out the reviews here!
Apart from itching, mosquitoes can carry various diseases through their bites, ranging from malaria, dengue fever, to the West Nile virus.
Quoted from detikEdu, a disease caused by mosquitoes affects 700 million people and kills 750,000 people each year. Efforts to eradicate mosquitoes have also been carried out, especially the development of repellants to sabotage the attractiveness of odors.
In fact, often we have mosquito bite marks around us, but don’t feel the bites at all. It turns out that mosquitoes don’t bite carelessly!
Mosquitoes have a special attraction to human blood which they find delicious. Then, how do mosquitoes identify the human blood they like?
Quoting from Science Dailythe identification of this insect against a person presenting an attractive food source is carried out by receptors on the neurons of the mosquito.
According to Christopher Potter, Ph.D., professor of neuroscience, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, understanding the molecular biology of mosquito odor sensing is key to avoiding mosquito bites.
Mosquitoes detect human odors mostly using their antennae. Scientists have observed that variations in smell, heat, humidity and carbon dioxide are factors that are more attractive to mosquitoes than some individuals.
However, Potter stated insects use many senses to find their hosts including mosquitoes.
Anopheles gambiae, the mosquito that causes malaria, has three types of receptors that coat the surface of the neurons in its olfactory organs, such as odor, gustatory or taste and ionotropic receptors.
Odor receptors are one of the receptors that are often studied by scientists. Departing from the results of these studies, it is known that odor receptors can help mosquitoes to distinguish between animals and humans.
Gustatory or taste receptors are used by mosquitoes to detect carbon dioxide. Meanwhile, ionotropic receptors are used to respond to acids and amines in human skin. Differences in skin acid levels are known to make individuals more attractive to mosquitoes.
More Bite Comes from Female Mosquitoes
The researchers had carried out their search for receptors in the segmented tube-like antennae of 10 female and 10 male mosquitoes. It was found that more bites on human skin came from female mosquitoes.
The researchers used a fluorescent in situ hybridization technique to find the RNA associated with the ionotropic receptor, meaning that it is highly likely that neurons produce the receptor.
In addition, researchers also found that most of the ionotropic receptors are in the distal part of the antenna and the proximal part of the mosquito. Through this research, Potter concluded that the antennae of mosquitoes are more complex than initially thought.
The researchers also identified several pairs of ionotropic receptors that would respond to acids or amines.
Then Potter has conjectured that the ability of neurons expressing ionotropic receptors to be activated and then inhibited by odors allows mosquitoes to increase the range of responses that ionotropic receptors can play to detect odors.
Future research related to mosquitoes will be focused on identifying ionotropic receptors because these receptors are considered to be the cause of mosquitoes being able to identify human odors which are considered pleasant.
This article was published on detikEdu with the title Scientists Reveal How Mosquitoes Choose ‘Tasty’ Human Blood
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