BLACKSBURG, Va., April 3 -- Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University issued the following news release:
A longstanding mystery in mosquito biology has been solved, opening a potential new path for controlling mosquitoes and the diseases they spread.
For decades, scientists believed that juvenile hormone, a chemical signal essential for mosquito reproduction, needed two different receptors to work: one inside the cell and another on its surface. The internal receptor was identified years ago, but the second remained elusive.
Now, researchers from Virginia Tech have shown that one protein was doing both jobs all along. In a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team found that the known receptor...