Oo-ooh, that smell.

Growing up in a region of the States where mosquitoes grew to monstrous proportions, forcing us to sweat around the campfire in skin-encasing pants and long-sleeved shirts, worrying if we’d all spontaneously combust due to the cloud of DEET forming a force-field around us, I think I’ve heard all derivations of methods to keep mosquitoes away and why they’re attracted to people – some more than others. For me and for most of us living in industrialized countries, finding ways to repel mosquitoes is mostly just about nuisance. We want to avoid those irritating itchy bumps and sleepless nights from that one damn mosquito that got trapped in the bedroom with us. However, for hundreds of millions of people living in sub-Saharan Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia, repelling mosquitoes is really a life-or-death battle.

The reason we in the States and other industrialized nations don’t have to worry about anything more than a mosquito bite (and the occasional West Nile virus scare) is because the mosquito species (Anopheles gambiae, for the Latin-proficient) that transmits the most fatal malaria parasite (another tongue-twister: Plasmodium falciparum) was successfully eradicated from these regions. In third-world countries, the mosquitoes still wreak havoc on the population. Of course, the hot and humid climate is perfect for these little pests. But the problem is much bigger: these are poor, undeveloped nations without the infrastructure or financial resources to implement large-scale eradication procedures. There have been great successes with insecticide-treated bed nets, but obviously a lot more work needs to be done, since 1-3 million people still die from malaria every year, making it one of the top three infectious disease killers (the other two being HIV-AIDS and tuberculosis).

Fortunately, scientists are on the case to figure out what attracts mosquitoes to humans. Even better, they know something more than what we grew up hearing: “you’re just not sweet enough,” or “just stop breathing and they won’t bother you.” Actually, mosquitoes have special odorant receptors in their neurons that let them “smell” different chemicals. That’s right, even though mosquitoes don’t have noses, they can smell! There are many different types of these odorant receptors that allow the mosquitoes to detect different chemicals – very similar to how humans can detect different odors (Su C et al. Cell 2009;139(1):45-59). A fascinating article was just published in the journal Nature, in which the authors wanted to know exactly which receptors were responsible for detecting human odors – no, not the odors you and I can detect on a crowded subway, but the chemicals we emit just by being human (Carey AF, et al. Nature 2010;464:66-71). The researchers did something really tricky: they knew the gene for each individual receptor. They also had mutant fruit flies that were missing their odorant receptors. The scientists could insert the mosquito receptor into a fruit fly neuron! Why is this so cool, other than just the simple fact that they could technically do this? Because they could put one receptor into one neuron, without all the other receptors around, and they could tell exactly what each receptor could respond to. In other words, they have a neuron with receptor A, and another with receptor B. They expose these neurons to different chemicals, some of which are found in human odors. If neuron A responds to a chemical, but not neuron B, the scientists would know that receptor A allows the mosquito to recognize this chemical. Some chemicals activated just one receptor, while some chemicals activated several; some receptors were activated by a small range of chemicals, while others by a large range (the researchers called this “tuning”).

These findings are really important to finding new ways to eradicate mosquitoes. If researchers can find receptors that let mosquitoes recognize humans, they can start researching how to block this response. If the mosquito can’t find her next meal, the consequences are pretty obvious. Or, if researchers can figure out the main chemicals being recognized by the mosquitoes, they can design traps to lure the mosquitoes away from human populations. Importantly, these techniques wouldn’t involve giving medicine or treatments to people or interfering with their daily lives.

What's this all about?

02.26.12: Addendum

The below was true at its time and still is, mostly. The blog suffered as I wrote papers and moved from abroad back to the States at the end of my postdoc. I am now out of academia and fully immersed in making the transition from lab rat to writer. So far, this has meant some freelance and contract work. The blog is being dusted off to build my online presence, to practice writing, and to have a format in which I can have the freedom to discover what niche I want to put myself in. 

Happy reading.

emb


Greetings from jaded-postdoc-writer-wannabe-land.

Somewhere in my march from undergrad biochemistry degree, subsequent PhD in pharmacology, and current postdoctoral fellowship, I have realized that as much as I love science, I don't want to be doing it anymore. It has nothing to do with my scientific career thus far - on the contrary, I've been blessed with fascinating research projects and supportive advisers and colleagues along the way. I just don't want to have my own lab in an academic setting.

This brings me to my present quandary: how to acquire skills and experience that don't involve a lab bench and a microscope, while not abandoning my postdoc, which gives me both security that I don't "have" to find a job right now and will soon increase the number of publications on my CV, which never hurt anyone.

My current state of soul-searching in this matter (which, thankfully, has moved past the "just quit and jump into the world of freelancing without any formal experience! Who needs a paycheck?!" state) is to find time to do what I want to be doing, even on a small scale.

That brings me to the next problem: what is it that I want to be doing? I love science: I love talking about it, learning about it, analyzing it. I also love to write. Seems like a no-brainer: science writing. But in what medium? In what style? I haven't developed myself as a writer. I have zero formal writing experience. I can write lab reports, grants, and research articles like a champ, but if that's what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, I'd be an academic researcher.

The other morning, I was spending hours I will never get back deteriorating my eyesight and my posture at the microscope doing some really mindless trained-monkey stuff (for the sake of posterity, you will get no details as to my current position). I had this sort of out-of-body epiphany, which caused me at once to realize the tragedy and comedy of the situation. What was I doing?? In that moment of clarity and depression, I had a clear idea of the kind of science writer I wanted to be. My favorite scientific conversations are with non-scientists. I get the most thought-provoking and challenging questions and viewpoints when I'm trying to explain what I do to my non-scientist friends and family. Unlike many of my colleagues, I LIKE explaining what I do to my mother. I want to write for all the non-scientist mothers out there. I want to translate the scientific jargon and boil it down to what really matters, what's really important, and the ways of interpreting it. I think scientists, in general, do a fantastically horrible job of stepping off their "these are the facts so you should believe them" pedestal to take the time to explain the basics, explain the evidence, explain the counter-evidence, so that everyone - mothers, politicians, policy-makers, media - can interpret what the science is saying.

So that brings me here. To begin my quest to bridge the communication gap between scientists and their mothers.

Why a blog? It avoids any conflict-of-interest with my current position. I can do it on my own time, with my own word-count and weekly production limits. Even if no one reads this, it's a challenge to myself to keep up with the literature outside of my field and present it here. At the very least, I'll be acquiring "writing samples" for any future job inquiries. I'm sure the format will change and evolve - I hope so! Right now, I see this blog as being a combination of commenting on popular science in the media, presenting current research articles I think are cool, and discussing conversations and interactions I have with scientists and non-scientists alike over a scientific topic. I want to avoid being too political - with the disclaimer that this is really really hard for me to do, especially around certain subjects. I want my role to be translator, because there are enough scientists out there ready to put the interpretation into your lap without explaining the data behind the interpretation.