Health
Mosquito taste for blood derived from 4 types of neurons
It is one of the deadliest animals in the world and prefers human blood, the mosquito.
Mosquitoes spread diseases such as malaria, dengue fever, and yellow fever, killing at least 500,000 people each year.Now researchers are learning what humans are taste I like mosquitoes Individual neurons It has a unique and delicious taste of blood.
Female mosquitoes have a taste that is specially tuned to detect combinations of at least four different substances in the blood, a team of researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Rockefeller University, Leslie B. Voshall. The journal reports October 12, 2020 Neuron.. The team genetically modified the mosquitoes so that researchers could see which neurons fired when the mosquitoes tasted the blood.
“This is definitely a technical tour,” says Chris Potter, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who studies mosquito repellent. Identifying specific taste neurons associated with blood may be “usable against mosquitoes,” he says.
Voshall and her team already knew a lot about other fine-tuned sensations of insects. For example, previous studies have found that mosquitoes can detect the repellent DEET on their feet and identified the olfactory receptors that mosquitoes use to distinguish between humans and non-humans. However, little is known about mosquitoes. tasteDespite being the key to spreading the disease. “If mosquitoes couldn’t detect the taste of blood, they couldn’t theoretically transmit the disease,” said Veronica Jové, Rockefeller’s HHMI Gilliam Fellow, who led the work in Vosshall’s lab. I will.
Only female mosquitoes eat the blood needed for eggs to grow. It puts women in a unique position. They need to distinguish between the sweet nectar they eat in most meals and the blood they eat before spawning.
Jobe suspected that female Aedes aegypti, unlike males, could distinguish between the two substances by taste. Indeed, in behavioral experiments, she found that female mosquitoes use different mouth parts and have two feeding modes that detect different tastes. Nector feed mode detects sugar and blood feed mode uses a syringe-like “stylet” to pierce the skin and taste the blood. Jové tricked mosquitoes into blood-sucking mode by providing a mixture of glucose (sugar) and four compounds. Sodium chloride (Salt), sodium bicarbonate (included in both blood and baking soda), and adenosine triphosphate (ATP), compounds that provide energy to cells.
Vosshall was curious, so he asked Jové to create an ATP solution in the lab and took a sip. “It has no taste at all,” she says. “ATP is this special mystery that tastes nothing to humans, but it must be incredibly exciting and rewarding for mosquitoes.”
Just as humans have taste buds that distinguish between salty, sweet, bitter, sour, and savory, mosquito stylets have specialized neurons that respond to specific tastes. To confirm that these taste neurons are functioning, researchers genetically modified mosquitoes with fluorescent tags that glow when nerve cells are activated. Then they saw which cells in the stylet turned on in response to different diets. Only a subset containing both real blood and the researcher’s artificial mixture was activated by blood.
So what Human blood Does it taste like a mosquito? Perhaps the closest we can say is that it’s a little salty and a little sweet. It’s a bit like a bee trying to see a flower in a shade of UV light that is invisible to the human eye, or a bat trying to eavesdrop on sonar waves that we can’t hear, Vosshall Says. Similarly, female mosquitoes can taste what we can’t. “In human experience, there is no such thing,” she says.
The findings shed light on how specially female mosquitoes are adapted to find blood. Jové and Vosshall say they hope that a better understanding of mosquito sensations will ultimately lead to new ways to prevent mosquitoes from biting us and spreading the disease.
One possibility may sound like a science fiction, says Vosshall, but there is precedent. “I gave my dog a monthly flea and tick drug orally,” she says. Perhaps in the end the same can be done for mosquitoes. This is a drug that humans can take before going to mosquito infested areas and can interfere with mosquito blood preferences.
After all, the idea of reducing the taste of humans raises the final question.Are some people really “delicious” mosquito Than others? “We are all delicious enough for mosquitoes,” says Jové.Once they detect blood, She says, “We don’t have the feeling that they are very noisy.”
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Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Quote: Mosquitoes against blood derived from 4 types of neurons (October 12, 2020) obtained from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-10-mosquitoes-blood-neurons.html on October 12, 2020 Preference
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