19 February 2024 – Flexible funding, superb science, and tremendous timing: elements that Matthew Paul Su says defined his three-month EMBO Scientific Exchange at Taiwan’s National Institute of Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology in Zhunan, where he learned how to develop and apply gene editing techniques to his group’s studies of mosquito biology.
“Mosquito-borne diseases affect hundreds of millions of people around the world each year, and the current tools that we have to control mosquitoes are often insufficient,” says Su, now an assistant professor at Nagoya University, Japan. “For humans, hearing the high-pitched buzz of a female mosquito can spell trouble – however, for male mosquitoes it’s great news because they find females by listening for this sound. There is a lot that we don’t know about the biology underlying this behaviour, and the connections between mosquitoes’ circadian clock, hearing, and mating habits. By learning more about this fundamental biology, I hope one day we will be able to support the development of more effective mosquito population control methods”.
“In 2018, CRISPR/Cas9-based mosquito gene editing methodologies were still relatively new and, thanks to my EMBO Scientific Exchange Grant, I was an early adopter of applying these methodologies in mosquitoes. This has opened every kind of door for me, enabled my group to vastly expand our research, and forged collaborations that are still going strong,” adds Su, who carried out the work in the group of Chunhong Chen. “My time was amazing: researchers have an international outlook and are extremely welcoming, and the country is incredibly beautiful. I would highly recommend it to anyone.”
