June 22, 2021 // Posted In Academics, Research
Mosquitoes are a fact of life each summer, and they’re far more than an annual annoyance. Globally, they’re a leading source of the spread of diseases like Zika, West Nile Virus and malaria, claiming nearly a million lives each year.
We all fight them but these four Baylor professors have taken the fight to the next level, focusing their research efforts on distinct approaches to combatting mosquitoes:
Dr. Cheolho Sim, associate professor of biology, is searching for the genetic “on-and-off switch” that tells mosquitoes to prepare for dormancy in the winter. He is part of a team that recently earned a $532,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to, essentially, learn how to trick mosquitoes; the grant will support research into the genes that impact a mosquito’s circadian rhythm, seeking to find the trigger that tells a mosquito to get ready for a cold season. If they discover this, Sim says, they could “control