Time-lapse Tuesday: Blood meal triggers mosquito death

Sandrine Ceurstemont, video producer

Death by food? If you're a mosquito, a large blood meal could be your last, if you're subjected to a new technique developed by Roger Miesfeld and his team from University of Arizona. They found that by inhibiting a process that releases digestive enzymes, mosquitoes die within 48 hours of blood sucking. In this time-lapse, you can see treated mosquitoes on the left slowly get knocked off while untreated ones on the right continue to dance around.

The approach could be used to curb the spreading of mosquito-borne diseases like malaria. "If we can kill the mosquito after she bites the first person, she won't be able to bite and infect a second," says Miesfeld. In these tests, mosquitoes were injected with a protein that targets genes required for digestion. But the team thinks an insecticide could be developed that could be soaked into mosquito nets.

"One potential issue with our strategy is genetic changes rendering the mosquitoes immune over time," says Miesfeld. "Many approaches from many angles will be necessary and ours could be another tool."

If you found this video interesting, you might also like to see a malaria parasite invade a blood cell.

Journal reference: PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1102637108

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/17181ca6/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Cnstv0C20A110C0A80Ctime0Elapse0Etuesday0Eblood0Emeal0Etriggers0Emosquito0Edeath0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

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