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Small in size but powerful with their stinging bite, mosquitoes are considered the deadliest animals on earth. Because the World Health Organization estimates that 725,000 people die each year from mosquito-borne diseases. Many of these diseases, such as West Nile virus and yellow fever, have recently resurfaced and caused public health crises.
To combat these deadly threats, a professor at Virginia Tech’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences is studying a recreational condition that is beneficial to both insects and humans.
Clement Winauger, assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry, has received a two-year grant of R430,000 from the National Institutes of Health to investigate the sleep habits of sleep-deprived people, perhaps if they are sleep-deprived. Mosquitoes also work.
Shaking sleep and studying the results
A good or bad night’s sleep can define a person’s day, and the same goes for mosquitoes. In humans, a good night’s rest improves memory, immune health, energy levels, and many other functions that contribute to overall well-being.
Unfortunately, sound sleep is just as important as the mission of mosquitoes. The more sleep they get, the more likely they are to bite, bite and spread disease. Fortunately, insomniacs are just as miserable as the sleepy mosquitoes that prey on them.
Most disease-causing mosquitoes are found in cities where people, noise and noise are present. But even in the hustle and bustle of city life, mosquitoes, like other insects, find time to sleep. From a scientific perspective, when you rest, rest your limbs and don’t move for long periods of time, you reach a sleep-like state, Vinauger said.
Vinauger’s research suggests that when these sleep patterns are disrupted — preventing mosquitoes from waking up and resting — they show symptoms of fatigue similar to those in humans.
Let’s say you’re up very late on a Saturday night. You will feel sad on Sunday and need more sleep to rejuvenate. Mosquitoes do the same when you don’t sleep well. They are very bad at making decisions the next day.”
Clement Vinaugher, Assistant Professor, Department of Biochemistry, Virginia Tech
Important decisions such as when and where to locate a human host.
A research grant from the National Institutes of Health to Vinauer and University of Cincinnati co-principal investigator Joshua Benoit expands these studies on two goals: to identify what happens in the brain when mosquitoes sleep and the consequences when they are inhibited.
Vinaugher, master’s student Shajayza Diggs and Nicole Wynn, Ph.D. candidate, to assist him in the laboratory in Steiger Hall.
“We have a great set-up here in the lab at Virginia Tech where we can record the electrical activity of neurons in the brains of mosquitoes while they sleep, so we can assess how sleep affects their brain function,” he said. “We will also sleep mosquitoes and test their ability to transmit viruses and see how this affects them.”
Clement Winauger, assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry, has received a two-year grant of R430,000 from the National Institutes of Health to investigate the sleep habits of sleep-deprived people, perhaps if they are sleep-deprived. Mosquitoes do the same. Photo by Luke Hayes for Virginia Tech
Vinauger collaborated with a University of Cincinnati team on this research, the first of its kind to study whether sleep-deprived mosquitoes can stop mosquitoes from finding human hosts or even their ability to spread disease.
“People are suffering and dying from these diseases all over the world, and with climate change, it’s getting worse,” Vinauger said. “To me, it’s a very clear indication that we need to think outside the box.”
To keep the mosquitoes awake in the lab, Benoit and his research team developed a program that shook the containers the mosquitoes were trapped in. The vibration is introduced at regular intervals, preventing him from falling asleep.
Vinauger said the research suggests new ways to control the environment in which mosquitoes thrive – in rural, humid areas of the world, such as sub-Saharan Africa, or in urban, cold cities such as New York City. Historically using chemicals such as insecticides. But with the increase in mosquito-borne diseases, Vinauger new strategies are necessary.
“If mosquitoes can escape our control methods, we need to find new control methods, and that’s where innovation comes in,” he said. “If we better understand how sleep is important to mosquitoes and disease transmission, we can identify targets that inhibit sleep or use the molecular basis of sleep to make them ineffective at reaching us. That could be easy. Like changing the frequency of light bulbs in cities, white noise in many rural areas.” This remains to be discovered or invented, but the first step is understanding, and that is what we are trying to achieve.
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