Mosquito-borne viruses can ravage nations, but researches hope to stop the next Zita-like outbreak with lasers.In May 2018, Dr Maggy Sikulu-Lord, from the University of Queensland, Australia, and colleagues revealed they had used infrared light to detect the Zika virus inmosquitos, 18 times faster and 110 times more cheaply than today's painstakingly slow and expensive standard - quantitative reverse transcription."Our main goal is to find the virus hot-spots quickly and more effectively," she says. "In the future we want to develop smaller handheld spectrometers that can be used to scan mosquitos in the field, and I would also like funding bodies to set up centres to process MRS data.