If you’re anything like me, you live for balmy summer nights outside, a tumbler of bourbon or other libation in hand. Alas, this moment of chill often comes at a price: red, swollen, itchy mosquito bites. But a study recently published in the journal Current Biology raises the possibility of essentially making mosquitoes blind to humans. In it, researchers used gene-editing technology to eliminate Aedes aegypti mosquitoes’ ability to see potential hosts, the New York Times reported.
According to the newspaper, Aedes aegypti females, which need to feed on blood to lay their eggs, infect tens of millions of people annually with the viruses responsible for diseases like Zika and yellow fever. To home in on us, they rely on the carbon dioxide we exhale, as well as “organic cues from our skin,” like our stench, Craig Montell a neurobiologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and one of the study authors, told the Times. Otherwise, they head to a dark spot, which could indicate the silhouette of a host.
