Mosquitoes with human-scent receptors removed from their antennae can still smell humans, which suggests their olfactory system has built-in redundancy
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The team expected that this would prevent the olfactory neurons from detecting the human scent and relaying this information to the brain. However, when they measured neuronal activity as the mosquitoes were exposed to the smell of humans, they found the insects could still detect the smell. “[This was] the last thing that we expected to find,” says Younger.
They suspected that the odours activated other receptors on the olfactory neurons. To confirm this, the researchers used RNA sequencing to pinpoint what was happening on a cellular level. They found that a single olfactory neuron could possess multiple types of receptors, rather than just one, and that human odour engaged some receptors than hadn’t been inactivated.
“If one of these types of olfactory receptors is mutated or no longer functioning, there’s this backup system,” says
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