Sweet Protection

Females of many mosquito species need a blood meal to reproduce, yet both sexes can also feed on sugary nectar for energy. Arboviruses transmitted by mosquitoes, like Zika or dengue, initially infect the mosquito gut before spreading to the salivary glands, from which they can be passed on to humans when females bite, but it seems the mosquitoes’ diet can affect their susceptibility. To test the effects of sugar feeding in the notorious viral vector Aedes aegypti, researchers fed females with sucrose solution dyed blue, to verify ingestion (pictured, left), then compared them with unfed females (right). Following a sugar meal, several genes associated with immunity were upregulated, and mosquitoes were less likely to be successfully infected by arboviruses, including Zika. Unfortunately, in many urban areas, A. aegypti are thought to feed primarily on blood, with very little nectar, and this could be contributing to high rates of virus transmission.

Written by Emmanuelle Briolat

Emmanuelle Briolat

Writer

A researcher specialising in visual signals in Lepidoptera, camouflage and the effects of light pollution, Emmanuelle’s writing covers a range of topics, from biomedical research to children’s books about moth defences.

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• Image by Emilie Pondeville, 2021. Pondeville Group, MRC Centre for Virus Research
• MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, Glasgow, UK
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in PLOS Pathogens, September 2021