Mosquito Season Is Here Your DNA Could Make You A Target! – Dave’s Diary

As kids on the farm chasing cows, exploring swamps and roaming 15-hundred acres of wheat, pasture and hay land, my brother and I would often come into contact with very large, very hungry North Dakota mosquitoes, lots and lots of mosquitoes.  Brother Al would get chewed alive and I would essentially be left alone.  I never knew why but hey, better he than me!  Maybe now we know why.New research shows that if mosquitoes are attracted to the scent of a particular person, they are likely to be attracted to her twin's scent as well. On the flip side, if they are repelled by someone's odor, they're likely to find her twin repellent, too.

After running versions experiments some 40 times they found that the overlap in mosquito preference was about twice as high for identical twins-who share virtually all their DNA - as it was for fraternal twins who share only half.

That allowed them to calculate that 62% to 83% of a person's degree of mosquito attractiveness is determined by  DNA.

The experimental results leave no doubt that some people are genetically programmed to be attractive to mosquitoes, and other lucky individuals have DNA that functions as a natural mosquito repellent. The researchers hope to use this knowledge to trick mosquitoes in the future.