New Insecticide Makes Mosquitoes Pop
新杀虫剂使蚊子炸裂
The substance prevents mosquitoes taking a blood meal from producing waste-causing them to swell up, and sometimes even explode. Christopher Intagliata reports.
那些阻止蚊子在吸血后排出废物的物质，使蚊子身体膨胀，有时甚至使它们炸裂。克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔报道。
撰文/播音：克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔(Christopher Intagliata)
翻译：郭鑫鹏
审校：丁可含
It’s bad enough that mosquitoes suck out blood, and sometimes pass on disease. But there’s more. “They can actually give you a disease and pee on you at the same time. Adding insult to injury if you will.” Jerod Denton, a pharmacologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
蚊子吸血让人感到很糟糕，这样的行为还会传播疾病，但还有更过分的。“它们向你传播疾病的同时在你身上撒尿，这可能会让你雪上加霜。“凡德比特大学医学中心药理学家叶罗·登顿说。
“If you look up almost any picture on Google of a mosquito taking a blood meal you’ll see a clear drop of fluid hanging out of the rear end of the mosquito. That’s actually the urine the mosquito has made from your blood.”
“如果你看了谷歌上蚊子吸血的图片，你可以清楚地看到从它们身体后部排出的一滴液体。这是蚊子通过吸食你的血液排出的尿液。“
That pee production is vital to the mosquito’s survival. Because blood is salty. “And as these mosquitoes digest the red blood cells to get at the proteins and other nutrients hiding there, they release potassium chloride which can cause depolarization of the membrane potential of excitable cells and induce ‘excitotoxic death.’” Translation: not good. So mosquitoes and other bloodsuckers have evolved a rapid diuretic process to expel salt from their bodies, using kidney-like structures. Basically, while still sucking blood, they start peeing.
这尿液对于蚊子生存至关重要，因为血液含盐。“当这些蚊子消化了血红细胞中的蛋白质和其他营养成分后，它们释放出氯化钾，这会导致可兴奋细胞膜电位的去极化，引起‘兴奋性死亡’。”简单来说，这样并不好，所以蚊子和其他吸血生物进化出一种快速利尿过程释放身体中的盐，它们使用像肾一样的结构。简单来说，在吸血时，它们开始排尿。
But Denton and his colleagues found a way to block all that. They developed a chemical compound that blocks the bugs’ salt-ejecting pores, “sort of like a cork in a bottle.” So when the skeeters come in contact with the compound, they swell up-and stay that way. “And in some cases we can actually see the abdomen rupture, because they’ve basically overfilled with food.” The study is in the journal Scientific Reports. [Daniel R. Swale et al., An insecticide resistance-breaking mosquitocide targeting inward rectifier potassium channels in vectors of Zika virus and malaria]
但是登顿和他的同事们找到了阻止它们的方法。他们研制了一种化合物可以阻塞虫子的“排盐孔”，就像瓶子的木塞。“所以当这些蚊子接触到这个化合物，它们会保持膨胀状态。”我们还可以清楚地看到在一些情况下它们腹部破裂，因为它们吃的太撑了。研究发表在期刊《科学报告》上。
The substance doesn’t kill honeybees, and it works well on insecticide-resistant mosquitoes, too. So if it turns out to be safe enough to use around humans, the pesticide will give a whole new meaning to “bye-bye, sucker!”
这种杀虫剂不会杀死蜜蜂，而适用于有抵抗力的蚊子身上。所以如果这对人类足够安全，这种杀虫剂可以在新的意义上对吸血生物说“再见”。
-Christopher Intagliata
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