Mosquitoes Are Getting A Nose Transplant

Posted on February 18, 2010 with No Comments

Scientists at Vanderbilt and Yale University have been working a proposed “Mosquito Nose Transplant.” What they do is take the nose of a mosquito, which is the center of their antennae which is filled with nerve cells and “odor receptors” that react to different compounds and transplant them to either frog eggs or fruit flies. The scientist have done a great job, successfully transplanting most of the nose. The key to this whole operation, however, is that these mosquitoes carry malaria, the deadly disease that affects 500 million people. They transplant these cells and put them into frog eggs or fruit flies. By doing this, they are trying to combat this disease that is crippling and killing millions of people.

Mosquitoes are notorious for carrying the West Nile Virus

The two strategies have produced similar results, but are different in the set up. The process of transplanting the odor receptors to the frog eggs complex. DNA is injected into the eggs, while the odor receptors are put on the outside of the egg. The process with the frog eggs is rapid, very sensitive and you get a precise measurement. The fruit fly takes up to 3 months to engineer with the odor receptors in their antennae. However, despite the length, there are advantages to the fruit fly process. You can study compounds that don’t dissolve in water as well as detecting chemicals in the receptors rather than exciting them. The result of these studies have been encouraging. There are some compounds that will attract the mosquitoes more than humans do and also compounds that will repel the mosquitos. These developments are encouraging in the prevention of the spreading of malaria, a disease that kills millions.

US News wrote first about this story