Life Science log

By David F. SalisburyOrigin of DEET's repellent effect confirmedIt now appears that the malaria mosquito needs more than one family of odor sensors to sniff out its human prey.That is the implication of new research into the mosquito's sense of smell published in the Aug. 31 issue of the online, open-access journal Public Library of Science Biology.The experiments described in the paper provide striking new evidence that Anopheles gambiae ? the species of mosquito that spreads malaria that infects some 250 million and kills 900,000 people annually ? has a second set of olfactory sensors that are fundamentally different from the set of sensors that scientists have known about and have been studying for the last 10 years.The discovery may help explain a puzzling question that has been plaguing scientists trying to develop new and more effective forms of mosquito lures and repellents:"The ORs [odorant receptors] that were identified in the lab before don't respond to a lot of human odors," says Vanderb