Meg Younger, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor (Biology, BME)

Office LSEB 402 (24 Cummington Mall)
Email myounger@bu.edu
Phone 617-358-1144
Website Younger Lab

Areas of Interest

The Younger lab studies olfaction in mosquitoes. The primary focus of the lab is to understand 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. Mosquitoes rely heavily on human-derived chemosensory cues as they search for a blood meal. Understanding how mosquitoes detect and encode human odor would provide a major inroad to preventing mosquito biting behavior and disease transmission. The study of mosquito olfaction also provides an opportunity to address fundamental questions about chemosensory neuroscience in an organism whose behavior is driven strongly by their sense of smell.

The approach of the lab is to develop and use cutting-edge neuroscience techniques in non-model species. We focus primarily on Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, combining techniques as needed to study olfaction. We utilize CRISPR-based gene editing to label different neuron types, complemented by functional imaging and electrophysiology during precise odor delivery and quantification. We 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 techniques to understand how human odor is encoded in the mosquito brain and ultimately develop novel strategies to thwart these deadly insects.

Meg Younger, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor (Biology, BME)

Publications