"If you are a human and you lose a single smell receptor, all of the neurons that express that receptor will lose the ability to smell that smell," Leslie Vosshall, the senior author of the paper said.
However, this is not the case with mosquitoes.
"You need to work harder to break mosquitoes because getting rid of a single receptor has no effect," Vosshall noted.
"Any future attempts to control mosquitoes by repellents or anything else has to take into account how unbreakable their attraction is to us."
According to the researchers, they started the project after looking at how human odour was encoded in the mosquito brain.
Vosshall thinks that other insects may have a similar mechanism.
Another research by Christopher Potter's research group at Johns Hopkins University recently found that fruit flies have similar co-expression of receptors that makes them attracted to fruits and smelly vegetables and garbage.
"This may be a general strategy for insects that depend heavily on their sense of smell," Vosshall said.
A Kenyan study by Professor Richard Mukabana, a lecturer at the Department of Biology, University of Nairobi lend credence to the findings by suggesting that mosquitoes are attracted to the carbon dioxide humans and other animals emit.
They also use their receptors and vision to pick up on other cues like body heat, perspiration and skin odour to find potential prey.
