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Behavioural neurobiology

The treacherous scent of a human

Nature volume 464, pages 37–38 (2010)Cite this article

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Mosquitoes' odorant receptors help the insects to find humans and, inadvertently, to transmit malaria. The identification of the odorants that bind to these receptors opens up ways of reducing mosquito biting.

The malaria mosquito, Anopheles gambiae, is an accessory to the deaths of about one million humans every year1. To acquire nutrients for their offspring, female mosquitoes feed on human blood. While sucking their victim's blood using contaminated, needle-like mouth parts, these mosquitoes unwittingly transmit the malaria-causing parasite that threatens half of the world's population. Globally, the number of people who get malaria each year is greater than the population of the United States1.

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Figure 1: What's that smell?

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  1. Walter S. Leal is in the Department of Entomology, University of California, Davis, Davis, California 95616, USA. wsleal@ucdavis.edu,

    Walter S. Leal

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  1. Walter S. Leal
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Leal, W. The treacherous scent of a human. Nature 464, 37–38 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/464037a

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