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Malaria-carrying mosquitoes get a leg up on insecticides

A chemosensory protein enriched in the legs of malaria-carrying mosquitoes gives them resistance to insecticides used to treat bed nets. This discovery points to the challenges of tackling malaria.
  1. Flaminia Catteruccia

    1. Flaminia Catteruccia is in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.

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The wide distribution of insecticide-treated mosquito nets across malaria-endemic regions has drastically reduced the incidence of the disease over the past 20 years, and so has saved millions of lives1. However, malaria-carrying mosquitoes have now developed strong resistance to the pyrethroid chemicals used in these long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs)2. An understanding of the mechanisms underlying resistance should reveal ways to make mosquitoes susceptible to insecticides once more. Writing in Nature, Ingham et al.3 demonstrate an unexpected way in which mosquitoes in Africa neutralize pyrethroids: they use a class of small proteins normally involved in chemical communication.

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Nature 577, 319-320 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03728-5

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