Detection of repellent smells by aquatic mosquito larvae

Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease that causes over 400,000 deaths per year. Since mosquitoes find humans and food sources by smell, it is essential to know how odorants are processed by mosquito olfactory neurons. Due to technical limitations this question still remains largely unanswered, especially in the case of mosquito larvae where no recordings has been done in vivo. To address this problem Olena Riabinina made the first transgenic Anopheles gambiae malaria mosquitoes that allow me to target their olfactory neurons (Riabinina et al, 2016). This project will test two hypotheses: 1) that artificial and natural repellents are detected by different olfactory receptor neurons; 2) that olfactory neurons are solely responsible for the aversion, observed in Aim 1. This project will significantly advance current understanding of how a simple aquatic olfactory system of mosquito larvae encodes odorants. Findings of this project will form the basis of a larger project that will make mosquitoes more sensitive to insect repellents by genetically editing their olfactory system, as a proof-of-principle experiment for a new method of malaria prevention.

Project details

Vector Control

Mar 2020 — Sep 2022

$133,210

United Kingdom