Hans-Lukas Teuber Lecture: Building a mosquito sensory system to hunt humans
Description
My group is interested in the molecular neurobiology of mosquito host-seeking behavior. Female mosquitoes require a blood meal to complete egg development. In carrying out this innate behavior, mosquitoes spread dangerous infectious diseases such as malaria, dengue fever, and yellow fever. Humans attract mosquitoes via multiple sensory cues including emitted body odor, heat, and carbon dioxide in the breath. The mosquito perceives differences in these cues, both between and within species, to determine which animal or human to target for blood-feeding. We have developed CRISPR/Cas9 genome-editing in the yellow fever and dengue vector mosquito, Aedes aegypti, with the goal of understand how sensory cues are integrated by the female mosquito to lead to host-seeking behavior. Some of the questions we are currently addressing are: Why are some people more attractive to mosquitoes than others? How do insect repellents work? How are multiple sensory cues integrated in the mosquito brain to elicit innate behaviors? How do female mosquitoes select a suitable body of water to lay their eggs? Recent advances from my group in analyzing the molecular biology of host-seeking behavior will be discussed.
Speaker Bio
Vosshall received her A.B. degree in Biochemistry from Columbia College in 1987, and her Ph.D. degree from The Rockefeller University in 1993, mentored by Dr. Michael Young. She conducted postdoctoral research with Dr. Richard Axel at Columbia University. She returned to Rockefeller in 2000 to establish the Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior.