Author: Tina Hesman Saey / Source: Science News
Mosquito researchers may have hatched a new plan to control the bloodsuckers: Break their eggshells.
A protein called eggshell organizing factor 1, or EOF1, is necessary for some mosquito species’ eggs and embryos to develop properly, a new study finds. Genetically disrupting production of that protein in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes caused about 60 percent of their normally dark eggshells to be pale. And shells lacking EOF1 often collapsed and were more porous than normal. In experiments, almost no mosquito embryos in the EOF1-disrupted eggs hatched into larvae, researchers report January 8 in PLOS Biology.
EOF1 is produced only by Aedes,…
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