Paul Breslin Receives Gates Foundation Grant
Monell scientist Paul A. S. Breslin, PhD, has been awarded a Grand Challenges Explorations grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The grant will support an innovative global health research project “Taste-Guided Behavior on Mosquitoes Helps Eradicate Malaria.”
Breslin’s grant focuses on the sense of taste in mosquitoes, with the overall goal of identifying new strategies to reduce transmission of malaria. Taste provides information that regulates whether a substance will be ingested as food or rejected. As such, the final decision of whether or not a mosquito will initiate a meal of human blood depends on how human skin tastes to the mosquito.
Currently, little is known about the taste world of mosquitoes. Dr. Breslin proposes that a deeper understanding of mosquito taste will reveal novel approaches to the design of strategies to reduce mosquito-mediated disease transmission.
As a first step, the studies funded by the Grand Challenges Explorations grant will assess taste responses of mosquitoes to a range of human skin compounds.
The Grand Challenges Explorations mosquito project is an extension of Breslin’s longstanding interests in taste and feeding. His Drosophila Chemosensory Laboratory at Monell uses the fruit fly as a model to understand the relationships between genetics, chemosensation, and feeding. Parallel studies in Breslin’s lab address the genetics of taste, smell, and chemical irritation in humans.
Monell researcher George Preti, PhD is also an investigator on the grant. An analytical organic chemist, Preti’s extensive expertise on human skin compounds is integral to the effort.
“By deterring mosquito tasting on human skin, we can help to stop the transmission of devastating diseases such as malaria,” said Breslin.
“The Grand Challenges Explorations grant will enable us to find out what it is about humans that mosquitoes find tasty. With that critical piece of information, we can then develop inhibitors to those substances. Once humans no longer taste good to mosquitoes, they will no longer use us as food.”
