Asset Details
Do you wish to reserve the book?
Mosquito brains encode unique features of human odour to drive host seeking
Hey, we have placed the reservation for you!
By the way, why not check out events that you can attend while you pick your title.
Oops! Something went wrong.
Looks like we were not able to place the reservation. Kindly try again later.
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
Mosquito brains encode unique features of human odour to drive host seeking
Do you wish to request the book?
Mosquito brains encode unique features of human odour to drive host seeking
Please be aware that the book you have requested cannot be checked out. If you would like to checkout this book, you can reserve another copy
We have requested the book for you!
Your request is successful and it will be processed during the Library working hours. Please check the status of your request in My Requests.
Oops! Something went wrong.
Looks like we were not able to place your request. Kindly try again later.
Journal Article
Mosquito brains encode unique features of human odour to drive host seeking
2022
Overview
A globally invasive form of the mosquito
Aedes aegypti
specializes in biting humans, making it an efficient disease vector
1
. Host-seeking female mosquitoes strongly prefer human odour over the odour of animals
2
,
3
, but exactly how they distinguish between the two is not known. Vertebrate odours are complex blends of volatile chemicals with many shared components
4
–
7
, making discrimination an interesting sensory coding challenge. Here we show that human and animal odours evoke activity in distinct combinations of olfactory glomeruli within the
Ae. aegypti
antennal lobe. One glomerulus in particular is strongly activated by human odour but responds weakly, or not at all, to animal odour. This human-sensitive glomerulus is selectively tuned to the long-chain aldehydes decanal and undecanal, which we show are consistently enriched in human odour and which probably originate from unique human skin lipids. Using synthetic blends, we further demonstrate that signalling in the human-sensitive glomerulus significantly enhances long-range host-seeking behaviour in a wind tunnel, recapitulating preference for human over animal odours. Our research suggests that animal brains may distil complex odour stimuli of innate biological relevance into simple neural codes and reveals targets for the design of next-generation mosquito-control strategies.
Select chemical compounds enriched in human odour activate an olfactory glomerulus in the brain of
Aedes aegypti
mosquitoes, which strengthens host-seeking behaviour and helps explain their strong preference for biting humans.
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group UK,Nature Publishing Group
Subject
/ 14/1
/ 14/19
/ 14/69
/ 45/41
/ 64
/ Animals
/ Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
/ Biokemi
/ Biokemi och molekylärbiologi
/ Female
/ Females
/ Humanities and Social Sciences
/ Humans
/ Kemi
/ Lipids
/ Mixtures
/ Mosquito Vectors - physiology
/ Neurons
/ Odorants
/ Odors
/ Olfactory discrimination learning
/ Science
