www.news-medical.net
Human skin chemistry shapes species-specific mosquito attraction patterns
There is no such thing as a universal mosquito magnet. In a new study published in iScience, Florida International University (FIU) researchers pitted 119 human volunteers against three of the world's most dangerous mosquito species and found that not one person was attractive to all three. Every species had its own type. Attraction was largely driven by chemistry - an individual's body chemistry. This single finding could reshape how the world fights mosquito-borne disease. Because each species decodes human scent differently, the results could help scientists develop next-generation, species-specific repellents. "Isolating the components of human odor that attract or repel mosquitoes could lead to novel strategies to combat vector-borne diseases," said Matthew DeGennaro, a neurogeneticist who leads the research team and directs the Biomolecular Sciences Institute at FIU, Miami's state university. The three species studied - Aedes aegypti, Aedes albopictus (Asian tiger mosquito) and Culex quinquefasciatus (southern house mosquito) - together spread yellow fever, dengue, Zika, West Nile and other diseases. The study, led by Ph.D. student Kaylee Marrero, is the first to directly compare how multiple mosquito species respond to the same people. "We didn't expect the species to prefer different people when we started the study," Marrero said...