Eyeless roundworms sense color
March 5, 2021MIT
Roundworms don’t have eyes or the light-absorbing molecules required to see. Yet, new research shows they can somehow sense color. The study, published on March 5 in the journal
Science, suggests worms use this ability to assess the risk of feasting on potentially dangerous bacteria that secrete blue toxins. The researchers pinpointed two genes that contribute to this spectral sensitivity and are conserved across many organisms, including humans.
“It’s amazing to me that a tiny worm with neither eyes nor the molecular machinery used by eyes to detect colors can identify and avoid a toxic bacterium based, in part, on its blue color,” says H. Robert Horvitz, the David H. Koch Professor of Biology at MIT, a member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, and the co-senior author of the study. “One of the joys of bei
Eyeless roundworms sense color
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Eyeless roundworms sense color
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Why male mosquitoes leave humans alone
A side-by-side comparison of the fruitless gene in the female (left) and male (right) mosquito brain.
Male mosquitoes won’t bite you. For one thing, they cannot-males are hopelessly bad at finding humans and lack a specialized stylet to pierce your skin. But even if they could bite you, they would not want to. They refuse blood meals served to them in the lab through netting, even as their female counterparts engorge on what must appear to be a free lunch.
Now, a new study from the laboratory of Rockefeller’s Leslie Vosshall helps explain why. It appears that both mosquito sexes share the same neurons and brain structures needed to find humans, but that this hardware is hidden in the male mosquito brain, locked behind a simple genetic switch. Mutate the right gene, the researchers discovered, and male mosquitoes begin buzzing toward human scents in search of a prize that they do not even want.