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What if you could become invisible to mosquitoes?

Aedes aegypti is a salt-and-pepper scourge on humans worldwide

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Photo: Shutterstock

Sabrina Imbler | NYT
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? 

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 Cur­rent Biology. By eliminating two of that mosquito’s light-sensing rec­eptors, the rese­a­rchers knocked out its ability to visually target hosts.

Aedes aegypti is a salt-and-pepper scourge on humans worldwide. 

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