If you’ve ever wished you could make yourself invisible to mosquitoes, then this article is for you!
Health
For those who work on farms or in fields, enjoy camping, or simply appreciate spending an evening outside by the pool or a lagoon, there is one common nemesis that can ruin everything and make life a living hell: mosquitoes. However, scientists now say they may have found a way to make humans completely invisible to the tiny, blood-sucking insects.
According to The New York Times, scientists have discovered a way to edit human genes via the Crispr-Cas9 gene-editing tool to effectively render humans invisible to the dreaded Aedes aegypti mosquito.
The female Aedes aegypti regularly hunts for blood under the sun, at dawn, and at dusk for the purpose of laying eggs — and infects tens of millions of people each year with flaviviruses that lead to dengue, yellow fever, and Zika. So, a mere whiff of carbon dioxide signals to the insect that someone or something has just exhaled nearby, sending the mosquito flying frenetically toward the nearest dark spot that it assumes is a human or animal filled with blood.
However, by limiting a mosquito’s light-sensing receptors, researchers have concluded it can knock out an insect’s ability to visually target hosts — which means that once a mosquito detects a blood-carrying mammal nearby, it won’t know where its target is located and will be left unable to feast.
“Nobody has studied this before,” said Neha Thakre, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, San Diego, who studies Crispr as a mosquito control tool.
“The better we understand how they sense the human, the better we can control the mosquito in an eco-friendly manner,” said Yinpeng Zhan, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
More studies are being done involving Crispr to confirm that the method is indeed foolproof. However, if scientists are as successful as they expect to be, we could soon walk into a swarming field of mosquitoes covered in honey knowing that we are safe and will emerge bite-free!
These mosquitos in Chicago are thugs. This might not work on them. Lol