Are you a mosquito magnet? Or do the insects tend to leave you alone? In either case, you can blame your smell. Well, more accurately, you can blame your skin bacteria. These microbes produce odorous compounds that mosquitoes use to find hosts to feed on. This means the make-up of your skin microbiota—and the odors it generates—plays a key role in how attractive you are to mosquitoes.

So, this raises the question: can we change our skin microbiota to repel, rather than attract, mosquitoes? Scientists are digging into this question, working toward developing strategies that repel mosquitoes with microbes in mind.

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