Assistant Professor of Biology

she/her

Lab WebsiteCVGoogle

Current Research

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.

The central approach of the Younger lab is to combine neurophysiology, anatomy, genetics, and behavior in order to understand the principles of olfaction across mosquito species. The Younger lab develops and uses a combination of modern neuroscience approaches newly developed for use in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes to study olfaction. We develop and use CRISPR-based gene editing approaches to label different neuron types, complemented by functional imaging and electrophysiology during precise odor delivery and quantification. Our approach enables us to combine function with anatomy, generating static maps of the mosquito brain at the light level in conjunction with whole-brain serial section electron microscopy. The lab aims to apply these approaches to understand mosquito olfaction and ultimately develop novel strategies to thwart these deadly insects.

Selected Publications

(#Indicates corresponding author; *Indicates equal contribution)

  • Hill TJ*, Kohli G*, Younger MA# (2026) “Advances in mosquito olfaction: Genetic, genomic, and behavioral approaches in Aedes aegypti.” Curr Opin Neurobiol 99: 103214.
  • Bao J*, Alford W*, Khandelwal A, Walsh L, Lantz G, Poncio S, Capdevila L, Azatian Y, Hildebrand D, Younger MA#, Lee WC#  “Connectivity supporting carbon dioxide sensitivity in the Aedes aegypti mosquito”. Preprint bioRxiv (2025)
  • Lienkaemper C, Younger MA, Ocker GC (2025) “When non-canonical olfaction is optimal.” Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 122(41): e2508439122.
  • Fernández-Chiappe F, Ocker GK, Younger MA# (2024) “Prospects on non-canonical olfaction in the mosquito and other organisms: why co-express?” Curr Opin Insect Sci 67: 101291.
  • Smith EJ, Vizueta J, Younger MA, Mullen SP and Traniello JFA (2023) “Dietary diversity, sociality, and the evolution of ant gustation.” Front Ecol Evol 11: 1175719.
  • Herre MR*, Goldman OV*, Lu TC, Caballero-Vidal G, Qi Y, Gilbert ZN, Gong Z, Morita T, Rahiel S, Ghaninia M, Ignell R, Matthews BJ, Li H, Vosshall LB, Younger MA*# (2022) “Non-canonical odor coding in the mosquito.” Cell 185(17):3104-3123.
    • Featured in “Best of 2022, Cell” by CellPress
  • Zhao Z, Zung JL, Hinze A, Kriete AL, Iqbal A, Younger MA, Matthews BJ, Merhof D, Thiberge S, Ignell R, Strauch M, McBride CS (2022) “Mosquito brains encode unique features of human odour to drive host seeking.” Nature 605:706-712.
  • Matthews BJ*,Younger MA*, Vosshall LB (2019) “The ion channel ppk301 controls freshwater egg-laying in the mosquito Aedes aegypti,” eLife8:e43963. 

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