Reception of odors and repellents in mosquitoes

- Mosquitoes sense exhaled CO2 and skin odor to find humans.
- Attractive odorants can be used as lures in mosquito traps.
- Inhibitors of the mosquito CO2 receptor can mask attraction.
- Insect repellents like DEET are detected by multiple sensory pathways.
- Discovery of new repellents can be improved using chemical informatics.

Mosquitoes use their sense of smell to find hosts, nectar, and oviposition sites, and to avoid repellents. A small number of mosquito species are adapted to feed on humans and have a major impact on public health by transmitting diseases such as malaria, dengue and filariasis. The application of odorants for behavioral control has not been fully realized yet due to complexity of the mosquito olfactory system. Recent progress in molecular and computational tools has enabled rigorous investigations of the mosquito olfactory system function and has started to reveal how specific receptors contribute to attractive and aversive behaviors. Here we discuss recent advances in linking odors to receptors and in exploiting this knowledge in finding attractants and repellents for mosquitoes.