News - Wednesday, January 23, 2008 14:27 - 0 Comments

CO2-Hating Flies Betray CO2-Loving Mosquitoes

Carbon dioxide: We’re emitting too much of it in our industrial processes. We’re not trapping enough of it in vegetation. Oh, and its presence in our exhaled breath provides mosquitoes carrying maladies like West Nile virus and malaria with a veritable GPS to our bloodstreams. Rockefeller University researchers have identified two proteins expressed by carbon dioxide-sensing neurons in drosophila fruit flies and mosquitoes–a discovery they say could help them design better insect repellants to shield us from the disease-laden bugs.

“Once we show that the mosquito receptors function in the same way as the fly receptors, we take a hint from drug companies–once they have a protein target in mind, [we] can screen for inhibitors of it.” says neurogeneticist Leslie Vosshall, the lead author on the study, published in this week’s issue of Nature.
Continue…