Meg Younger
Assistant Professor, Odorant Receptors, Chemosensation, Mosquitoes, Calcium Imaging, Neurophysiology, Behavior
- Title Assistant Professor, Odorant Receptors, Chemosensation, Mosquitoes, Calcium Imaging, Neurophysiology, Behavior
- Office 24 Cummington Mall
- Email myounger@bu.edu
- Education BS in Neural Science in 2004 from New York University
PhD in Neuroscience in 2013 from the University of California, San Francisco
The Younger lab studies olfaction in mosquitoes. The primary focus of the lab is to learn about how mosquitoes detect and encode human odor and how this drives their search for a human to bite. Mosquito-borne diseases affect millions of people worldwide and claim more than half a million lives each year. Only female mosquitoes bite, and they do so because they require a blood-meal for reproduction. Female mosquitoes rely heavily on human-derived chemosensory cues as they search for a blood meal and understanding how mosquitoes detect and encode human odor would provide a major inroad to preventing mosquito biting behavior and disease transmission.