What If You Could Become Invisible to Mosquitoes?

Using Crispr, scientists have taken the first step toward creating a mosquito that is blind to human hosts.

If you could have just one superpower, flight or invisibility, which would you choose? And would your answer change if you could become invisible to mosquitoes? Sure, you might never soar among eagles or brush your cheek against a wisp of cloud. But you would also no longer flee from swarming clouds of mosquitoes, and you would be protected from the deadly diseases that the insects spread. For the first time, scientists have used the gene-editing tool Crispr-Cas9 to render humans effectively invisible in the eyes of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which use dark visual cues to hunt, according to a paper recently published in the journal Current Biology. By eliminating two of that mosquito’s light-sensing receptors, the researchers knocked out its ability to visually target hosts.