Mosquito Forms (IMAGE)

Princeton University

Mosquito Forms

Caption

Researchers report that the yellow fever mosquito sustains its taste for human blood thanks in part to a genetic tweak that makes it more sensitive to human odor. The human-preferring 'domestic' form of the mosquito (right) contains a version of the odor-detecting gene AaegOr4 in its antennae that is highly attuned to sulcatone, a compound prevalent in human odor. The researchers found that this gene is more abundant and more sensitive in the domestic form than in its ancestral 'forest' form (left), which prefers the blood of non-human animals.

Credit

Carolyn McBride, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute

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