The bizarre activities of mosquito research
Hey, how was your day? ~Ah yeah good thanks, I vacuumed up 600 mosquitoes and then I injected each one in their belly with the Dengue virus. What did you get up to?
In the last year, I moved across the world to work with a lab that investigates mosquitoes and how we can prevent their spread of human diseases such as the Dengue virus. This lab was based in Melbourne, Australia but we have recently moved to Penn State University in Pennsylvania, USA to continue the research.
During this time, I learnt how to rear mosquitoes in the lab and investigate them experimentally. It turns out, this is a very amusing job. Apart from the fact that mosquitoes seem to love me and I spend most of my time in the insectary with inflamed ankles seeping out of my shoes:
Note: we rear mosquitoes in cages and sometimes we accidentally let some out. This is NOT the case once we have infected them with Dengue- each mosquito is housed permanently and is tracked at each step. So don't worry- I don't have Dengue and the risk of that is strictly managed.
Here are a few of the practices that amuse me:
1. How does one acquire mosquitoes from a cage? Well, you vacuum them of course.
In this image you can see an adapted flashlight, where the end has been modified into a vacuum with a little mosquito cage. We use this to suck up poor unsuspecting mosquitoes. Easy.
2. How do you feed mosquitoes?
You can either give them super sugary water in cotton wool, or you can give them blood artificially through mesh, or you can give them a human volunteer.....
Left: mosquitoes in pee cups
Right: mosquitoes in Chinese take-away cups
Below: mosquitoes in big mesh cages
3. How do you know which ones are female?
Only females bite humans and so transmit disease. To tell males and females apart we put the mosquitoes into the fridge so they can chill out a bit, we then put them onto a glass surface on ice so they remain cool. They can't move when they're cold. We can then sort them into males and females: males have more bushy antennae and are smaller in size. We pick them up and move them with tweezers and paintbrushes.
4. How do you inject a mosquito????
We make tiny tiny needles by melting glass tubes and pulling it. It has to be thin and pointy enough. Then we attach it to this thing:
We then put individual mosquitoes on a gas pad which releases CO2 to send them to sleep. We then lay them on their side and inject them into their thorax. Simple.
5. How do you dissect a mosquito?!
With tiny tiny metal pins. On sticks. Under a microscope.
Viewing down a microscope: this is a female mosquito with the ovaries removed (white objects at the bottom).
6. How do you feed mosquito larvae?
When mosquitoes are babies they live in water and they look like this:
What do you feed them, I hear you ask? Fish food. We feed them fish food.
7. How can you measure the transmission of human diseases through mosquitoes?
Obviously we cannot infect humans with our mosquitoes- THAT WOULD BE WRONG. What we can do is measure the Dengue virus in their saliva when they feed on other things. Like sugary water.
In this image is a tiny lid with sugary water in. We then collect the lid and measure the Dengue virus left in the water.
Some mosquitoes get it, some don't:
8. How do you collect their eggs?
Some labs use coffee filter paper. We use standard lab filter paper:
This is a view of Aedes aegypti mosquito eggs under the microscope.
Mosquitoes are pretty funny and how we research them is bizarre. This research is, however, critical for understanding how we may be able to prevent the transmission of human diseases.
I will leave you with these two colourful girls full of my friends blood:
