撰文/播音 Christopher Intagliata（克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔）
翻译 郭丰茹
审校 丁可含
As you've probably experienced firsthand, some mosquito species have a real taste for warm, human blood. So much so that if you raise them on it the lab, they'll accept no substitute.
正如大家可能亲身经历过的那样，一些蚊子喜欢人类的温暖血液。以至于如果你把它们养在实验室里，它们会拒绝替代品。
"Fortunately, I don't get major reactions at all." Brad Main is a mosquito geneticist at U.C. Davis… and part-time mosquito meal provider. "So it's not too bad for me. But some people in the lab are itching pretty bad when they have hundreds of mosquito bites on their arms."
“幸运地是，我没有发现大的副作用。”布拉德˙梅（Brad Main）是戴维斯加大（U.C. Davis）的蚊类基因学家而且是兼职的蚊子饲养者。“如此说来对我来讲也不是太糟糕。但是有些人在实验室被几百只蚊子叮咬胳膊的时候会奇痒难耐。”
Out in the wild, some species are less picky. Take Anopheles arabiensis, common in East Africa. They'll feed on cattle, dogs, goats, pigs, people—wherever they can find a warm meal. But what Main and his colleagues wanted to know was whether the bloodsuckers' choice of victim might be genetically determined. So they sequenced the genomes of 48 arabiensis mosquitoes from Tanzania which had fed on either humans or cows.
在野外，一些蚊类并不太挑剔。以东非常见的阿拉伯按蚊（Anopheles arabiensis）为例，无论在哪里，它们都可以找得到一顿温暖的午餐，他们可以吸食牛、狗、山羊、猪、人的血液。但梅和他的同事欲多加了解的是，疟蚊对血液的选择或许是基因决定的。所以他们选择来自坦桑尼亚（Tanzania）的48只按蚊（arabiensis mosquitoes）进行基因组测序。
And they found that bugs with cow blood in their bellies had one partially rearranged chromosome, compared to those who'd snacked on human blood… which could explain the preferences in meal choices. The study is in the journal PLoS Genetics. [Bradley J Main et al., The Genetic Basis of Host Preference and Resting Behavior in the Major African Malaria Vector, Anopheles arabiensis]
他们发现，以牛血液为食的按蚊与吸食人类血液的蚊子相比，它们的部分染色体（chromosome）发生了重组。这就可以解释按蚊选择的偏好。这项研究发表在杂志PLoS Genetics上。[Bradley J Main et al., The Genetic Basis of Host Preference and Resting Behavior in the Major African Malaria Vector, Anopheles arabiensis]
If that genetic switch really does make cows more attractive than we are to mosquitoes, in theory we could genetically engineer them to steer clear of people. And their cow victims don't get human malaria. "It's a case of knowing your enemy. So the better we know these mosquitoes, the better equipped we're going to be to control them."
如果通过基因改造真的可以使奶牛对蚊子更有吸引力，理论上，我们可以通过基因工程使人类面对疟蚊机灵地脱身，而且奶牛作为蚊子的“牺牲品”不会得人类疟疾。想要博弈制胜的前提是了解你的敌人。所以，我们越了解这些蚊子，我们会有更多的办法去控制它们。
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