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:Aedes mosquitoes transmit pathogenic arthropod-borne (arbo) viruses, putting nearly half the world’s population at risk. Blocking virus replication in mosquitoes rather than in humans serves as a promising approach to prevent arbovirus transmission, which requires in-depth knowledge of mosquito immunity. By integrating multi-omics data, we identified that heat shock factor 1 (Hsf1) regulates eight small heat shock protein (sHsp) genes within one topological associated domain. This Hsf1-sHsp cascade acts as an early response against chikungunya virus (CHIKV) infection and shows pan-antiviral activity in three vector mosquitoes, Aedes aegypti, Aedes albopictus, and Anopheles gambiae. We then assessed the baseline expression of sHsp genes in different tissues of female Ae. aegypti using RNA-seq, and we observed a highly dynamic expression pattern of sHsp genes that varied dramatically across different tissues. Interestingly, sHsp genes were expressed at low levels in two main barrier tissues, the midgut and salivary glands, compared to other tissues such as the crop. Importantly, activation of Hsf1 led to a reduced CHIKV infection rate in adult Ae. aegypti mosquitoes, demonstrating Hsf1 as a promising target for the development of novel intervention strategies to limit arbovirus transmission by mosquitoes.
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.
Project description:Female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes impose a severe global public health burden as primary vectors of multiple viral and parasitic pathogens. Under optimal environmental conditions, Aedes aegypti females have access to human hosts that provide blood proteins for egg development, conspecific males that provide sperm for fertilization, and freshwater that serves as an egg-laying substrate suitable for offspring survival. As global temperatures rise, Aedes aegypti females are faced with climate challenges, like intense droughts and intermittent precipitation, which create unpredictable and suboptimal conditions for the egg-laying step of their reproductive cycle. Aedes aegypti mosquitoes nonetheless show remarkable reproductive resilience, but how they achieve this is unknown. Here we show that under drought-like conditions simulated in the laboratory, mated, blood-fed Aedes aegypti females carrying mature eggs retain them in their ovaries for extended periods, while maintaining the viability of these eggs until they can be deposited in freshwater. Using transcriptomic and proteomic profiling of Aedes aegypti ovaries, we identify two previously uncharacterized genes – here named tweedledee and tweedledum – that show ovary-enriched, temporally-restricted expression during egg retention. These genes are mosquito-specific, linked within a syntenic locus, and rapidly evolving under positive selection, raising the possibility that they serve an adaptive function. Using loss-of-function mutagenesis to disrupt both genes, we show that, tweedledee and tweedledum, which encode secreted proteins, are specifically required for extended retention of viable eggs, such as during intermittent precipitation or drought. These results highlight an elegant example of taxon-restricted genes at the heart of an important adaptation that equips Aedes aegypti females with “insurance” to, when contextually appropriate, flexibly extend their reproductive sequence without losing reproductive capacity, thus allowing this species to exploit diverse and unpredictable habitats.
Project description:The impact of global climate change on the transmission dynamics of infectious diseases is the subject of extensive debate. The transmission of mosquito-borne viral diseases is particularly complex, with climatic variables directly affecting many parameters associated with the prevalence of disease vectors. While evidence shows that warmer temperatures often decrease the extrinsic incubation period of an arthropod-borne virus (arbovirus), exposure to cooler temperatures often predisposes disease vector mosquitoes to higher infection rates. RNA interference pathways are essential to antiviral immunity in the mosquito; however, few experiments have explored the effects of temperature on the RNAi machinery. Total small RNAs (miRNAs, siRNAs, piRNAs, etc.) were isolated and sequenced from the heads of sensor strain Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, or from the whole bodies of CHIKV-infected Aedes albopictus mosquitoes 8 hours post infection. Mosquitoes were grown at 18C or 28C in replicates of 1 (Ae. aegypti) or 3 (Ae. albopictus).
Project description:We conducted a whole transcriptome analysis of testes from a meiotic drive-carrying strain (T37) in comparison with a drive-sensitive strain (RED) using microarrays based on the complete annotated Ae. aegypti gene set. The T37 strain, which carries a strong meiotic drive gene (Mori et al., 2004 (PMID 15605641)), was established from mosquitoes collected in Trinidad. The RED strain is highly sensitive to the meiotic drive gene (Hickey and Craig, 1966 (PMID ); Mori et al., 2004 (PMID 15605641)). A six-chip study using total RNA recovered from three biological samples of the T37 strain and another three biological samples of the Red strain of Aedes aegypti. Each chip measures the expression level of 16,092 genes annotated from the Aedes aegypti genome sequence, with twenty 60-mer probe pairs (PM/MM) per gene, with three-fold technical redundancy.
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:We used our deep sequence data and bioinformatics to analyzed the miRNA repertoires expressed in the CA of pupae, sugar-fed and blood-fed female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. In total, 156 mature miRNAs were detected in the CA, with 84 displaying significant differences in expression among the three CA developmental stages. Notably, the changes in the miRNA repertoire in the CA in the pupa-adult transition have completely different characteristics compared with the changes from sugar-fed to blood-fed mosquitoes.
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.