To combat mosquito-borne diseases that claim a whole lot of 1000's of lives every year, scientists have enlisted an unlikely ally: a fungus that kills the scent of flowers.
Exploiting the attraction of mosquitoes to flowers, a global team of researchers engineered a brand new strain of fungus that releases a sweet scent just like real flowers. The modified fungus draws in and infects insects, eventually killing them.
The scientists were inspired by a natural fungus that secretes a nice chemical called longfolin, which they found could attract mosquitoes. Taking this concept further, they developed a fungus that acts like a deadly scent for insects, offering a promising tool against malaria, dengue and other deadly diseases which are becoming increasingly immune to chemical pesticides. Their search was published on October 24, 2025.
How do “fragrant” fungi work?
“Mosquitoes need flowers because they provide nectar, which is an important source of food for them, and they are attracted to flowers by their scents,” said co-author Raymond St. Leger, a distinguished university professor on the University of Maryland. “After observing that some types of fungi could trick mosquitoes into thinking they were flowers, we realized we could turbo-charge the attraction by engineering fungi to produce more longifolene, a sweet-smelling compound that's already very common in nature. Before this study, longifolene was not known to attract mosquitoes. We're letting nature give us a hint to tell us what works against mosquitoes.”
According to St. Leger, flower-scented fungi provide a simple and accessible option to control mosquito populations. The spores can easily be placed indoors or in containers outside, where they slowly release longfolin over several months. When mosquitoes come into contact with the fungus, they turn out to be infected and die inside days. In laboratory tests, the fungus worn out 90 to 100% of mosquitoes, even in environments stuffed with scents competing with people and real flowers. Despite its power, the fungus is totally harmless to humans.
Safe, targeted, and environmentally friendly
“The fungus is completely harmless to humans because longfolin is already commonly used in fragrances and has a long safety record,” St Leger said. “This makes it much safer than many chemical pesticides. We also designed the fungus and its containers specifically to target other pests and mosquitoes in the long-term environment.”
Also, unlike chemical alternatives that mosquitoes have regularly turn out to be immune to, this biological approach could make it nearly unimaginable for mosquitoes to flee or escape.
“If mosquitoes are evolved to avoid lympholine, that could mean they stop responding to flowers,” St Leger explained. “But they need flowers as a food source to survive, so it will be very interesting to see how they can possibly avoid the fungus but still be attracted to the flowers they need. It will be very difficult for them to overcome this barrier, and we have the option of engineering the fungi if they are specifically designed to avoid the longfolians.”
Affordable and scalable global capability
What makes this latest fungal technology particularly promising is how practical and reasonably priced it's. It is usually cultivated all over the world on inexpensive materials comparable to chicken droppings, rice husks and wheat scraps which are available after harvest. The cheapness and ease of the fungus would be the key to reducing mosquito-borne disease-related deaths in lots of parts of the world, particularly in poorer countries of the Global South.
The seek for effective latest weapons against mosquitoes could also be more essential than ever. St Leger warns that in the longer term, mosquito-borne diseases currently confined to the tropics could threaten latest targets, including the United States. With rising global temperatures and increasing unpredictability of weather, disease-carrying mosquitoes have begun to spread into latest areas beyond their usual habitats.
“Mosquitoes love the many ways we're changing our world,” St. Leger said. “Right now, we're hoping to use these methods in Africa, Asia and South America. But one day, we'll need them ourselves.”
Next steps within the fight against mosquito-borne disease
St. Ledger and his colleagues at the moment are testing the fungus in larger outdoor trials to arrange it for regulatory review.
“It's not like you're necessarily going to find a silver bullet to control mosquitoes everywhere, but we're trying to find something that people in different parts of the world can use and choose from,” St. Leger said. “Different approaches will work best for different people for their particular situation and for the particular mosquitoes they're dealing with. Ultimately, our goal is to give people as many options as possible to save lives.”