New Insect Repellant May Be Thousands Of Times Stronger Than Deet

[JMJones0424]

New insect repellant may be thousands of times stronger than DEET

 

 

Imagine an insect repellant that not only is thousands of times more effective than DEET – the active ingredient in most commercial mosquito repellants – but also works against all types of insects, including flies, moths and ants.

 

That possibility has been created by the discovery of a new class of insect repellant made in the laboratory of Vanderbilt Professor of Biological Sciences and Pharmacology Laurence Zwiebel and reported this week in the online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

 

In preliminary tests with mosquitoes, the researchers found the new class of repellant, called Vanderbilt University Allosteric Agonist or VUAA1, to be thousands of times more effective than DEET. The compound works by affecting insects’ sense of smell through a newly discovered molecular channel.

 

“If a compound like VUAA1 can activate every mosquito odorant receptor at once, then it could overwhelm the insect’s sense of smell, creating a repellant effect akin to stepping onto an elevator with someone wearing too much perfume, except this would be far worse for the mosquito,” said Patrick Jones, a post-doctoral fellow who conducted the study with graduate students David Rinker and Gregory Pask.

 

http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2011/05/biologists-discover-new-insect-repellant/

[Michaelangelica]

What does it do to our sense of smell?

 

What does it do to drug-finding-dogs' sense of smell?

[JMJones0424]

I don't know enough about mammalian anatomy, or about this compound, to accurately answer your question. However, it appears to me that the press release implies that mammals will not be able to smell the compound.

 

In the last few years, however, scientists have been surprised to learn that the olfactory system of mosquitoes and other insects is fundamentally different [than mammals]. In the insect system, conventional ORs [olfactory receptors] do not act autonomously. Instead, they form a complex with a unique co-receptor (called Orco) that is also required to detect odorant molecules.

...

“Think of an OR as a microphone that can detect a single frequency,” Zwiebel said. “On her antenna the mosquito has dozens of types of these microphones, each tuned to a specific frequency. Orco acts as the switch in each microphone that tells the brain when there is a signal.

 

“When a mosquito smells an odor, the microphone tuned to that smell will turn ‘on’ its Orco switch. The other microphones remain off,” he continued. “However, by stimulating Orco directly we can turn them all on at once. This would effectively overload the mosquito’s sense of smell and shut down her ability to find blood.”

...

Although it is not an odorant molecule, the researchers determined that VUAA1 activates insect OR-Orco complexes in a manner similar to a typical odorant molecule.

[Moontanman]

SO it's 1000 times as effective as DEET? That means the mosquitoes would eat you alive and only leave a skeleton 1000 times faster? :doh: