Abstract
A group of scientists reports that DEET seems to keep malaria mosquitoes from smelling humans by preventing skin compounds from vaporizing and finding their way to the mosquitoes’ antennae. The lead researcher, Christopher Potter of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, says understanding how mosquitoes’ olfactory systems interact with repellents could lead to a next generation of mosquito-fighting compounds that are less toxic than DEET but equally effective (Curr. Biol. 2019, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2019.09.007). The team developed a test that makes neurons in the mosquitoes’ antennae fluoresce when the odor receptors embedded in the cells turn on. After showing that the system responded to human odorants, the scientists tested several repellents, including synthetic ones (DEET, picaridin, and IR3535) and natural products (lemongrass oil and eugenol). The synthetic repellents had no effect on the mosquitoes’ olfactory system. The natural products did, suggesting that the natural repellents likely ...
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