According to the Sina Technology report on June 15, 2013, the findings of "Mosquitoes that are genetically modified to lack some of their sense of smell cannot tell humans from other animals and no longer avoid approaching people who are slathered in bug spray," has published online on May 30, 2013, in "Nature1" magazine. These findings could help scientists to design insect repellents to fight against malaria, dengue and agricultural pests.

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Some mosquito species will bite most animals that they meet. "Aedes aegypti", the mosquito that carries dengue and yellow fever, and "Anopheles gambiae", which carries the malaria parasites, are choosier: they prefer humans.

Leslie Vosshall, a neurobiologist at The Rockefeller University in New York says in a latest study: "They (mosquitoes) love everything about us, they love our beautiful body odor, they love the carbon dioxide we exhale and they love our body heat."

A series of experiments showed that without the Orco protein, the mosquitoes can barely distinguish the smell of honey from that of glycerol (an odorless liquid of similar consistency), and humans from other animals. "It's sort of like a game show where the mosquitoes are released into a box and we ask them to choose door number one, where there's a human arm, or door number two, where there are our beloved guinea pigs," said Lesile Vosshall.

"The mutant mosquitoes that did pick the scent of the human arm, however, did not hesitate to approach it." Vosshall says "orco and the smell receptors that it produces are important for picking between hosts, but not for finding and feeding on them."

"The time has come now to do genetics in these important disease-vector insects. I think our new work is a great example that you can do it."