The blood-sucking insects probably evolved that taste because people tend to live in groups and near water, where mosquitoes lay their eggs. “They love our beautiful body odor, they love the carbon dioxide we exhale, and they love our body heat,” Rockefeller University neurobiologist Leslie Vosshall tells Nature.com. Vosshall and her colleagues have now genetically engineered one human-loving mosquito species so that it lacks an odor receptor, making the insects unable to tell the difference between people and other animals. “By disrupting a single gene, we can fundamentally confuse the mosquito from its task of seeking humans,’’ Vosshall says. The research could lead to new and better repellents.
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