Root exudate chemical cues of an invasive plant modulate oviposition behavior and survivorship of a malaria mosquito vector.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Milugo TK
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8292407 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Similar Datasets
Project description:Selection of oviposition sites by gravid females is a critical behavioral step in the reproductive cycle of Anopheles coluzzii, which is one of the principal Afrotropical malaria vector mosquitoes. Several studies suggest this decision is mediated by semiochemicals associated with potential oviposition sites. To better understand the chemosensory basis of this behavior and identify compounds that can modulate oviposition, we examined the generally held hypothesis that suboptimal larval habitats give rise to semiochemicals that negatively influence the oviposition preference of gravid females. Dual-choice bioassays indicated that oviposition sites conditioned in this manner do indeed foster significant and concentration dependent aversive effects on the oviposition site selection of gravid females. Headspace analyses derived from aversive habitats consistently noted the presence of dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), dimethyl trisulfide (DMTS) and 6-methyl-5-hepten-2-one (sulcatone) each of which unitarily affected An. coluzzii oviposition preference. Electrophysiological assays across the antennae, maxillary palp, and labellum of gravid An. coluzzii revealed differential responses to these semiochemicals. Taken together, these findings validate the hypothesis in question and suggest that suboptimal environments for An. coluzzii larval development results in the release of DMDS, DMTS and sulcatone that impact the response valence of gravid females.
| S-EPMC4768836 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Malaria parasites are transmitted to humans by mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles, and these insects are the targets of innovative vector control programs. Proposed approaches include the use of genetic strategies based on transgenic mosquitoes to suppress or modify vector populations. Although substantial advances have been made in engineering resistant mosquito strains, limited efforts have been made in refining mosquito transgene expression, in particular attenuating the effects of insertions sites, which can result in variations in phenotypes and impacts on fitness due to the random integration of transposon constructs. A promising strategy to mitigate position effects is the identification of insulator or boundary DNA elements that could be used to isolate transgenes from the effects of their genomic environment. We applied quantitative approaches that show that exogenous insulator-like DNA derived from the Drosophila melanogaster gypsy retrotransposon can increase and stabilize transgene expression in transposon-mediated random insertions and recombinase-catalyzed, site-specific integrations in the malaria vector mosquito, Anopheles stephensi. These sequences can contribute to precise expression of transgenes in mosquitoes engineered for both basic and applied goals.
| S-EPMC3645527 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The reproductive fitness of the Anopheles gambiae mosquito represents a promising target to prevent malaria transmission. The ecdysteroid hormone 20-hydroxyecdysone (20E), transferred from male to female during copulation, is key to An. gambiae reproductive success as it licenses females to oviposit eggs developed after blood feeding. Here we show that 20E-triggered oviposition in these mosquitoes is regulated by the stress- and immune-responsive c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK). The heads of mated females exhibit a transcriptional signature reminiscent of a JNK-dependent wounding response, while mating-or injection of virgins with exogenous 20E-selectively activates JNK in the same tissue. RNAi-mediated depletion of JNK pathway components inhibits oviposition in mated females, whereas JNK activation by silencing the JNK phosphatase puckered induces egg laying in virgins. Together, these data identify JNK as a potential conduit linking stress responses and reproductive success in the most important vector of malaria.
| S-EPMC7462981 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Standard advice regarding vector control is to prefer interventions that reduce the lifespan of adult mosquitoes. The basis for this advice is a decades-old sensitivity analysis of 'vectorial capacity', a concept relevant for most malaria transmission models and based solely on adult mosquito population dynamics. Recent advances in micro-simulation models offer an opportunity to expand the theory of vectorial capacity to include both adult and juvenile mosquito stages in the model.In this study we revisit arguments about transmission and its sensitivity to mosquito bionomic parameters using an elasticity analysis of developed formulations of vectorial capacity.We show that reducing adult survival has effects on both adult and juvenile population size, which are significant for transmission and not accounted for in traditional formulations of vectorial capacity. The elasticity of these effects is dependent on various mosquito population parameters, which we explore. Overall, control is most sensitive to methods that affect adult mosquito mortality rates, followed by blood feeding frequency, human blood feeding habit, and lastly, to adult mosquito population density.These results emphasise more strongly than ever the sensitivity of transmission to adult mosquito mortality, but also suggest the high potential of combinations of interventions including larval source management. This must be done with caution, however, as policy requires a more careful consideration of costs, operational difficulties and policy goals in relation to baseline transmission.
| S-EPMC4357799 | biostudies-other
Project description:South Africa aims to eliminate malaria within its borders by 2018. Despite well-coordinated provincial vector control programmes that are based on indoor residual insecticide spraying, low-level residual malaria transmission continues in the low-altitude border regions of the north-eastern sector of the country. In order to identify the underlying causes of residual transmission, an enhanced vector surveillance system has been implemented at selected sites in the Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) provinces. The collection periods for the data presented are March 2015 to April 2016 for Mpumalanga and January 2014 to December 2015 for KZN. The mosquito collection methods used included indoor and outdoor traps based on the use of traditional ceramic pots, modified plastic buckets and exit window traps (KZN only). All Anopheles funestus species group mosquitoes collected were identified to species and all females were screened for the presence of Plasmodium falciparum sporozoites. Two An. vaneedeni females, one from each surveillance site, tested positive for P. falciparum sporozoites. These are the first records of natural populations of An. vaneedeni being infective with P. falciparum. As both specimens were collected from outdoor-placed ceramic pots, these data show that An. vaneedeni likely contributes to residual malaria transmission in South Africa.
| S-EPMC5338325 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Malaria control programs are being jeopardized by the spread of insecticide resistance in mosquito vector populations. It has been estimated that the spread of resistance could lead to an additional 120000 deaths per year, and interfere with the prospects for sustained control or the feasibility of achieving malaria elimination. Another complication for the development of resistance management strategies is that, in addition to insecticide resistance, mosquito behavior evolves in a manner that diminishes the impact of LLINs and IRS. Mosquitoes may circumvent LLIN and IRS control through preferential feeding and resting outside human houses and/or being active earlier in the evening before people go to sleep. Recent developments in our understanding of mosquito swarming suggest that new tools targeting mosquito swarms can be designed to cut down the high reproductive rate of malaria vectors. Targeting swarms of major malaria vectors may provide an effective control method to counteract behavioral resistance developed by mosquitoes. Here, we evaluated the impact of systematic spraying of swarms of Anopheles gambiae s.l. using a mixed carbamate and pyrethroid aerosol. The impact of this intervention on vector density, female insemination rates and the age structure of males was measured. We showed that the resulting mass killing of swarming males and some mate-seeking females resulted in a dramatic 80% decrease in population size compared to a control population. A significant decrease in female insemination rate and a significant shift in the age structure of the male population towards younger males incapable of mating were observed. This paradigm-shift study therefore demonstrates that targeting primarily males rather than females, can have a drastic impact on mosquito population.
| S-EPMC5344402 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Aedes albopictus, a vector of Dengue and Chikungunya viruses, is a robust invasive species in both tropical and temperate environments. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) regulate gene expression and biological processes including embryonic development, innate immunity and infection. While a number of miRNAs have been discovered in some mosquitoes, no comprehensive effort has been made to characterize them from different developmental stages from a single species. Systematic analysis of miRNAs in Ae. albopictus will improve our understanding of its basic biology and inform novel strategies to prevent virus transmission. Between 10-14 million Illumina sequencing reads per sample were obtained from embryos, larvae, pupae, adult males, sugar-fed and blood-fed adult females. A total of 119 miRNA genes represented by 215 miRNA or miRNA star (miRNA*) sequences were identified, 15 of which are novel. Eleven, two, and two of the newly-discovered miRNA genes appear specific to Aedes, Culicinae, and Culicidae, respectively. A number of miRNAs accumulate predominantly in one or two developmental stages and the large number that showed differences in abundance following a blood meal likely are important in blood-induced mosquito biology. Gene Ontology (GO) analysis of the targets of all Ae. albopictus miRNAs provides a useful starting point for the study of their functions in mosquitoes. This study is the first systematic analysis of miRNAs based on deep-sequencing of small RNA samples of all developmental stages of a mosquito species. A number of miRNAs are related to specific physiological states, most notably, pre- and post-blood feeding. The distribution of lineage-specific miRNAs is consistent with mosquito phylogeny and the presence of a number of Aedes-specific miRNAs likely reflects the divergence between the Aedes and Culex genera.
| S-EPMC3698096 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Human Malaria is transmitted by mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles. Transmission is a complex phenomenon involving biological and environmental factors of humans, parasites and mosquitoes. Among more than 500 anopheline species, only a few species from different branches of the mosquito evolutionary tree transmit malaria, suggesting that their vectorial capacity has evolved independently. Anopheles albimanus (subgenus Nyssorhynchus) is an important malaria vector in the Americas. The divergence time between Anopheles gambiae, the main malaria vector in Africa, and the Neotropical vectors has been estimated to be 100 My. To better understand the biological basis of malaria transmission and to develop novel and effective means of vector control, there is a need to explore the mosquito biology beyond the An. gambiae complex.We sequenced the transcriptome of the An. albimanus adult female. By combining Sanger, 454 and Illumina sequences from cDNA libraries derived from the midgut, cuticular fat body, dorsal vessel, salivary gland and whole body, we generated a single, high-quality assembly containing 16,669 transcripts, 92% of which mapped to the An. darlingi genome and covered 90% of the core eukaryotic genome. Bidirectional comparisons between the An. gambiae, An. darlingi and An. albimanus predicted proteomes allowed the identification of 3,772 putative orthologs. More than half of the transcripts had a match to proteins in other insect vectors and had an InterPro annotation. We identified several protein families that may be relevant to the study of Plasmodium-mosquito interaction. An open source transcript annotation browser called GDAV (Genome-Delinked Annotation Viewer) was developed to facilitate public access to the data generated by this and future transcriptome projects.We have explored the adult female transcriptome of one important New World malaria vector, An. albimanus. We identified protein-coding transcripts involved in biological processes that may be relevant to the Plasmodium lifecycle and can serve as the starting point for searching targets for novel control strategies. Our data increase the available genomic information regarding An. albimanus several hundred-fold, and will facilitate molecular research in medical entomology, evolutionary biology, genomics and proteomics of anopheline mosquito vectors. The data reported in this manuscript is accessible to the community via the VectorBase website (http://www.vectorbase.org/Other/AdditionalOrganisms/).
| S-EPMC3442982 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Small laboratory cage trials of non-drive and gene-drive strains of the Asian malaria vector mosquito, Anopheles stephensi, were used to investigate release ratios and other strain properties for their impact on transgene spread during simulated population modification. We evaluated the effects of transgenes on survival, male contributions to next-generation populations, female reproductive success and the impact of accumulation of gene drive-resistant genomic target sites resulting from nonhomologous end-joining (NHEJ) mutagenesis during Cas9, guide RNA-mediated cleavage. Experiments with a non-drive, autosomally-linked malaria-resistance gene cassette showed 'full introduction' (100% of the insects have at least one copy of the transgene) within 8 weeks (? 3 generations) following weekly releases of 10:1 transgenic:wild-type males in an overlapping generation trial design. Male release ratios of 1:1 resulted in cages where mosquitoes with at least one copy of the transgene fluctuated around 50%. In comparison, two of three cages in which the malaria-resistance genes were linked to a gene-drive system in an overlapping generation, single 1:1 release reached full introduction in 6-8 generations with a third cage at ~80% within the same time. Release ratios of 0.1:1 failed to establish the transgenes. A non-overlapping generation, single-release trial of the same gene-drive strain resulted in two of three cages reaching 100% introduction within 6-12 generations following a 1:1 transgenic:wild-type male release. Two of three cages with 0.33:1 transgenic:wild-type male single releases achieved full introduction in 13-16 generations. All populations exhibiting full introduction went extinct within three generations due to a significant load on females having disruptions of both copies of the target gene, kynurenine hydroxylase. While repeated releases of high-ratio (10:1) non-drive constructs could achieve full introduction, results from the 1:1 release ratios across all experimental designs favor the use of gene drive, both for efficiency and anticipated cost of the control programs.
| S-EPMC6922335 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Wolbachia, a maternally inherited intracellular bacterial species, can manipulate host insect reproduction by cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI), which results in embryo lethality in crosses between infected males and uninfected females. CI is encoded by two prophage genes, cifA and cifB. Wolbachia, coupled with the sterile insect technique, has been used in field trials to control populations of the dengue vector Aedes albopictus, but CI-inducing strains are not known to infect the malaria vector Anopheles gambiae. Here we show that cifA and cifB can induce conditional sterility in the malaria vector An. gambiae. We used transgenic expression of these Wolbachia-derived genes in the An. gambiae germline to show that cifB is sufficient to cause embryonic lethality and that cifB-induced sterility is rescued by cifA expression in females. When we co-expressed cifA and cifB in male mosquitoes, the CI phenotype was attenuated. In female mosquitoes, cifB impaired fertility, which was overcome by co-expression of cifA. Our findings pave the way towards using CI to control malaria mosquito vectors.
| S-EPMC8612931 | biostudies-literature