Project description:Phylogenetic analysis and molecular identification tools for identifying the Ochlerotatus punctor species complex (Diptera: Culicidae) in Manitoba
Project description:Over the last 20 years, the advances in sequencing technologies highlighted the unique composition of the salivary glands of blood-feeding arthropods. Further biochemical and structural data demonstrated that salivary proteins can disrupt host hemostasis, inflammation and immune response in addition to favor pathogen transmission. Previously, a Sanger-based sialome of the adult Ochlerotatus. triseriatus female salivary glands was published based on 731 ESTs. Here we revisited O. triseriatus salivary glands contents using an Illumina-sequencing approach of both male and female tissues. In the current data set we report 10,317 coding DNA sequences classified into several functional classes. The translated transcripts also served as reference database for the proteomic analysis of O. triseriatus female saliva, in which unique peptides of 101 proteins were found. Finally, comparison of male and female libraries allowed the identification of female-enriched transcripts that are potentially related to blood acquisition and virus transmission.
Project description:La Crosse virus is a leading cause of pediatric encephalitis in the United States. The mosquito Ochlerotatus triseriatus is an efficient vector for La Crosse virus, whereas the closely related O. hendersoni transmits only at very low rates. Quantitative trait loci (QTL) affecting the ability to orally transmit this virus and adult body size were identified in 164 F(2) female individuals from interspecific crosses of O. hendersoni females and O. triseriatus males using a combination of composite interval mapping (CIM), interval mapping (IM) for binary traits, and single-marker mapping. For oral transmission (OT), no genome locations exceeded the 95% experimentwise threshold for declaring a QTL using IM, but single-marker analysis identified four independent regions significantly associated with OT that we considered as tentative QTL. With two QTL, an increase in OT was associated with alleles from the refractory vector, O. hendersoni, and likely reflect epistatic interactions between genes that were uncovered by our interspecific crosses. For body size, two QTL were identified using CIM and a third tentative QTL was identified using single-marker analysis. The genome regions associated with body size also contain three QTL controlling OT, suggesting that these regions contain either single genes with pleiotropic effects or multiple linked genes independently determining each trait.
