No more blood tests, now life-saving light beam to detect malaria

No more blood tests, now life-saving light beam to detect malaria

A fast, needle-free malaria detection tool developed by a University of Queensland-led team could help save hundreds of thousands of lives annually. Malaria is usually detected by a blood test, but scientists have devised a method using a device that shines a beam of harmless infrared light on a person’s ear or finger for five-to-10 […]

Scent, sweat from human skin attract disease-spreading mosquitoes

Scent, sweat from human skin attract disease-spreading mosquitoes

Mosquitoes that spread Zika, dengue and yellow fever are guided toward their victims by a scent from human skin. The exact composition of that scent has not been identified until now. A UC Riverside-led team discovered that the combination of carbon dioxide plus two chemicals, 2-ketoglutaric and lactic acids, elicits a scent that causes a […]

Making mosquitoes self-destruct

Making mosquitoes self-destruct

Researchers at the University of California, Riverside have developed transgenic mosquitoes that stably express the Cas9 enzyme in their germline. The addition of Cas9 will enable the use of the CRISPR gene editing tool to make efficient, targeted changes to the mosquitoes’ DNA. As proof of concept, the researchers used the system to disrupt cuticle, […]