Ever Wondered Mosquitoes also get stress while sucking your Blood. Yes that's true there are several ways due to which it may get stressed. Be it the fear of being tightly slapped by a Human hand or handle the hot Blood of Humans.A recent study at The Ohio State University has shown that mosquitoes make proteins which help them handle the stressful spike in body temperature that's prompted by their hot blood meals.
The mosquito's eating pattern is inherently risky:
- Taking a blood meal involves finding warm-blooded hosts,
- avoiding detection, penetrating tough skin and
- evading any host immune response,
- not to mention the slap of a human hand.
Scientists have determined that theinsects protect themselves from the stress of the change in body temperature during and after a meal by producing heat shock proteins. This study was carried out in female insects. These proteins provide protection to the integrity of other proteins and enzymes which help the mosquitoes to digest the blood meal and maintain their ability to produce eggs. Tests in two other types of mosquitoes and in bed bugs showed that these insects undergo a similar response after a blood meal. "These heat shock proteins are really important in a lot of stress responses. Our own bodies make these proteins when we have a fever," said David Denlinger, professor of evolution, ecology and organismal biology at Ohio State University and senior author of the study. "It's one of those things that, in retrospect, seems obvious – that blood meals might cause a stress like that. But it hadn't been pursued before." The research will be appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In the studies, the researchers placed sensors on female mosquitoes and subsequently observed that upon taking in a blood meal on a chicken, the insects' body temperatures increased from 22 to 32 degrees Celsius (71.6 to 89.6 Fahrenheit) within one minute – among the most rapid body temperature increases ever recorded in a cold-blooded animal. However, the body temperature decreased after feeding. In response to that blood feeding, the mosquitoes' level of Hsp70 – heat shockprotein 70 – increased nearly eightfold within one hour and remained at least twice as high as usual for 12 hours. The increase in these proteins was most pronounced in the midgut area.
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