Project description:This analysis compare gene expression between 4 day old sugar fed female and male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Keywords: Aedes aegypti sex specific expression
Project description:Wolbachia are intracellular maternally inherited bacteria that can spread through insect populations and block virus transmission by mosquitoes, providing an important new dengue control strategy. To better understand the mechanisms of virus inhibition, proteomic quantification of the effects of Wolbachia in mosquito (Aedes aegypti) midguts was performed.
Project description:Wolbachia is a vertically transmitted intracellular bacteria that infect most than 60% of insect species. The strains wMelPop and wMel were introduced in the dengue virus vector Aedes aegypti, naturally not infected by Wolbachia. Recently, it was shown that those two strains inhibit dengue virus replication into their new host, A. aegypti (Moreira et al. 2009 and Walker et al. in preparation). The aim of this project is to look at the transcriptional response of Aedes aegypti to infection with wMel and wMelPop and try to find some genes or pathway potentially involved in the viral interference.Four laboratory lines of A. aegypti were used throughout this study. The PGYP1 and Mel2 lines were generated by transinfection with wMelPop and wMel strains respectively. PGYP1.tet and Mel2tet lines were treated with the antibiotic tetracycline and cured from Wolbachia infection (McMeniman et al., 2009 and Walker et al in preparation). The Mosquitoes were reared under standard laboratory conditions (26 ± 2 °C, 12:12 light/dark cycle, 75% relative humidity). Mosquito larvae were fed 0.1mg/larvae of TetraMin Tropical Tablets once a day. Adults were transferred to cages (measuring 30 x 30 x 30 cm) at emergence at 400 individuals per cage. Adults were supplied with a basic diet of 10% sucrose solution (Turley et al., 2009).
Project description:Wolbachia pipientis is an intracellular symbiotic bacterium found in insects and arthropods. Wolbachia can decrease the vectorial capacity for various pathogens, such as the dengue virus, in Aedes aegypti. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of Wolbachia (wMel strain) on the vectorial capacity of Ae. aegypti for Dirofilaria immitis. We analyzed gene expression patterns by RNA-seq in addition to the D. immitis infection phenotype in Ae. aegypti infected with and without wMel. Four Ae. aegypti strains, MGYP2.tet, MGYP2, Liverpol (LVP)-Obihiro (OB), and LVP-OB-wMel (OB-wMel) were analyzed for transcriptome comparison in Malpighian tubule at 2 days post infection. The correlation between Wolbachia infection, D. immitis infection phenotype and immune-related genes expression in Ae. aegypti was investigated.
Project description:Microarray analysis on days 1, 2 and 7 post-infection with dengue, yellow fever and West Nile virus in Aedes aegypti Rockefeller strain mosquitoes RNA was purified and hybridized with Nimblegen X4 microarray chips using 81-mer probes designed from 18,000 open reading frames (ORF) found in the Ae. aegypti genome, with 2 different probes per ORF
Project description:Aedes aegypti mosquitoes infect hundreds of millions of people each year with dangerous viral pathogens including dengue, yellow fever, Zika, and chikungunya. Progress in understanding the biology of this insect, and developing tools to fight it, depends on the availablity of a high-quality genome assembly. Here we use DNA proximity ligaton (Hi-C) and Pacific Biosciences long reads to create AaegL5 - a highly contiguous A. aegypti reference.
Project description:Zika virus is a global public health emergency due to its association with microcephaly, Guillain-Barré syndrome, neuropathy, and myelitis in children and adults. A total of 87 countries have had evidence of autochthonous mosquito-borne transmission of Zika virus, distributed across four continents, and no antivirus therapy or vaccines are available. Therefore, several strategies have been developed to target the main mosquito vector, Aedes aegypti, to reduce the burden of different arboviruses. Among such strategies, the use of the maternally-inherited endosymbiont Wolbachia pipientis has been applied successfully to reduce virus susceptibility and decrease transmission. However, the mechanisms by which Wolbachia orchestrate resistance to ZIKV infection remains to be elucidated. In this study, we apply quantitative isobaric mass spectrometry-based proteomics to quantify proteins and identify pathways altered during ZIKV infection; Wolbachia infection; co-infection with Wolbachia/ZIKV in the Ae. aegypti. We show that Wolbachia regulates proteins involved in ROS production, regulates humoral immune response, and antioxidant production. The reduction of ZIKV polyprotein in the presence of Wolbachia in the mosquitoes was determined by mass spectrometry and corroborates the idea that Wolbachia helps to block ZIKV infections in Ae. aegypti. The present study offers a rich resource of data to help elucidate mechanisms by which Wolbachia orchestrate resistance to ZIKV infection in Ae. aegypti.
Project description:PIWI-interacting (pi) RNAs are a class of small RNAs that have diverse functions in mosquitoes. In order to uncover novel components involved in biogenesis or function of the piRNA pathway in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, we performed mass spectrometry analyses on immunoprecipitated PIWI proteins and their interactors.
Project description:Chromosomal inversions play a fundamental role in evolution and have been shown to be responsible for the epidemiologically important traits in malaria mosquitoes. However, they have never been characterized in the major vector of arboviruses Aedes aegypti because of the poor structure of its polytene chromosomes. In this study, we applied a Hi-C proximity ligation approach to identify chromosomal inversions in 23 recently collected strains of Ae. aegypti from its worldwide distribution, two old laboratory colonies, and Ae. mascarensis.