Our lab examines how animals detect and process sensory information to control their behavior. We focus on how insects, particularly disease-spreading insects, sense and respond to sensory inputs, especially temperature and humidity. This allows us to address fundamental questions in physiology, cell biology and neuroscience, while simultaneously exploring issues of direct relevance to human health. At a basic science level, the fundamental mechanisms of temperature and humidity detection remain unknown, providing numerous opportunities for discovery. At a practical level, mosquito-borne diseases sicken more than 500 million people annually, killing >500,000, and mosquitoes rely on the detection and processing of sensory input, including temperature and humidity, to find humans to bite and water for egg laying. A better understanding of how mosquitoes sense and respond to these cues will be important for devising new strategies to combat the spread of vector-borne disease.

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In the lab, we use three insect species: the model insect, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster;  the malaria vector, the mosquito Anopheles gambiae; and the dengue vector, the mosquito Aedes aegypti. We use Drosophila melanogaster because its powerful molecular genetics facilitate the discovery and dissection of sensory mechanisms at the molecular and circuit levels. We use Anopheles gambiae and Aedes aegypti mosquitoes because they allow us to leverage insights from Drosophila to understand the complex behaviors of host-seeking and blood-feeding responsible for the transmission of malaria, dengue, and other devastating human diseases. Together, these systems complement one another and allow our lab to work on topics of intrinsic basic science interest while contributing to efforts relevant to human health.