What are you thinking when mosquitoes are dingling?

Om ~ Om ~ Om ~

To summer

The mosquito started its doomsday carnival

Become a lingering nightmare

Unbearable editor 的

I plan to give a color to a mosquito!

But repeatedly let the mosquito escape

This makes the editor can't help but be meditated

How can I subdue mosquitoes?

So -called

Knowing and knowing that he knows one another

Know the mosquito in -depth

In order to achieve the great cause of mosquitoes

Figure 1 The geographical subspecies of a pale library mosquito (a geographical subcontain of the sharp -tank mosquito, which is a common "family mosquito") structural schematic diagram. Source: wikipedia

Today's 125 years ago

British microbiologist and doctor Ronald Rose

Discovered in the laboratory

Mosquito is the medium of spreading malaria

So he got it five years later

Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine

And this day on August 20th

It is also established as "World Mosquito Day"

To improve the public's malaria and other

Awareness of mosquito transmission of disease

So let Xiaobian take everyone today

understand deeper

The side of the mosquito unknown

Blocking -What is the mosquito's brain thinking?

2015 to 2021

Professor Lindy McBride Laboratory Laboratory Laboratory Laboratory of Cornell University

It took 6 years to study mosquitoes

March 2022

Published "Mosquito Brain" in "Nature"

Unique features encoding human smell

To drive the host to find "research

Figure 2 Professor Professor of Lindy McBride feeds mosquitoes

In order to explore "what mosquitoes are thinking when smelling people?", Professor Lindy McBride had a "craniotomy" surgery for Egyptian mosquitoes. At the same time, the craniotomy mosquito needs to live. The experimental team edit the mosquito gene to mark the nerve cells in the brain with fluorescent protein. When the nerve cells in a brain area are activated, the fluorescence will be enhanced and you can know which brain area is activated.

Figure 3 After the gene editing, the fluorescence reaction in the brain of Egyptian and mosquitoes

Experiment 1: Smell it for the same mosquito

The smell of 8 people and 5 animals

Blank: blank group, indicating only air;

Red ball: sniffing the ball, the deeper the red, the stronger the activation;

Green Arrow: Sniff balls that are only activated by human odor H;

Orange arrow: Sniff ball A that can be activated by animal smell;

Blue Arrow: Sniff Ball B, which can be activated by the smell of human and animals.

Figure 4 The smell of humans and animals activates the olfactory ball of different combinations in the tentacles of Egyptian and mosquito tentacles

Further studies have found that mosquito sniffing ball probes are declining, and decantaldehyde is widely existed in human smells, rarely existed in the smell of animals.

Figure 5 The relative abundance of a single compound in the smell of animals

Conclusion 1: Since the smell of human scent contains a lot of decreasedehyde, the smell of animal is very small in the smell of animals, and the deciam aldehyde can activate the sniffing ball, so mosquitoes prefer the smell of human.

To verify this conclusion, the team conducted experiment two.

Experiment 2: Wind tunnel experiment

Use ethanol and decantaldehyde to simulate human smell, release odors upstream in the wind tunnel, release mosquitoes downstream, and observe the reaction of mosquitoes.

Figure 6 Wind tunnel experimental device

Figure 7 Single mosquito flight trajectory example

Experiments show that the common activation of B and H sniffing balls can more cause a stronger host search than activating B sniffing ball alone, just like human smells can cause stronger host search than animal odors.

With the increase of the smell concentration, the mosquito tracking of the smell presentation first increases and then decreased, reaching the peak at a concentration of 1/5X, indicating that mosquito does not like humans with too much or too little or too little. People.

Figure 8 When the concentration of human gas reaches 1/5X, the mosquito tracking will reach the peak

The smell is just okay

Congratulations!

Tompy -Is it annoying that mosquitoes themselves?

The mystery of unsolved world

Why do mosquito buzz when sleeping?

Isn't she annoying herself?

Can't she hear it?

In fact, there are about 15,000 cells related to hearing in the nervous system of mosquitoes. For mosquitoes, "buzzing" is love.

Generally speaking, the male mosquito height is about 600 Hz, which is about G. The female mosquito wings are larger, the slap is relatively slow, the tone is slightly lower, about 450 Hz, about D tone.

When female mosquitoes meet with male mosquitoes

They will adjust their wings to beat the speed

To emit the same tone (about 2000 Hertz)

Tell each other

You at this time

This is a good opportunity for one arrow and double carving

- END -