Department of Biology and Volen Center for Complex Systems, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 02453, USA.
Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Science. 2020 Feb 7;367(6478):681-684. doi: 10.1126/science.aay9847.
Mosquitoes transmit pathogens that kill >700,000 people annually. These insects use body heat to locate and feed on warm-blooded hosts, but the molecular basis of such behavior is unknown. Here, we identify ionotropic receptor IR21a, a receptor conserved throughout insects, as a key mediator of heat seeking in the malaria vector Although mediates heat avoidance in , we find it drives heat seeking and heat-stimulated blood feeding in At a cellular level, is essential for the detection of cooling, suggesting that during evolution mosquito heat seeking relied on cooling-mediated repulsion. Our data indicate that the evolution of blood feeding in involves repurposing an ancestral thermoreceptor from non-blood-feeding Diptera.
蚊子传播的病原体每年导致超过 70 万人死亡。这些昆虫利用体温来定位并以温血宿主为食，但这种行为的分子基础尚不清楚。在这里，我们确定了离子型受体 IR21a，一种在昆虫中广泛保守的受体，作为疟疾传播媒介中热寻求的关键介质。尽管 在 中 介导热回避，但我们发现它驱动了 在 中的热寻求和热刺激血液摄取。在细胞水平上， 在 中对于检测冷却至关重要，这表明在进化过程中，蚊子的热寻求依赖于冷却介导的排斥。我们的数据表明， 在 中血液摄取的进化涉及重新利用来自非吸血双翅目动物的祖先热敏受体。
