Estimating female malaria mosquito age by quantifying Y-linked genes in stored male spermatozoa
Madan, Damian, Rivera, Rafael, Ortega, Corrie, Touchon, Justin C., Kimball, Corinna, Van Gemert, Geert-Jan, Graumans, Wouter, Matsuura, Stephanie, Parghi, Sean S., Bell, David, Bousema, Teun, Drakeley, Chris, Collins, Katharine A., and Burkot, Thomas R. (2022) Estimating female malaria mosquito age by quantifying Y-linked genes in stored male spermatozoa. Scientific Reports, 12. 10570.
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Abstract
Vector control strategies are among the most effective measures to combat mosquito-borne diseases, such as malaria. These strategies work by altering the mosquito age structure through increased mortality of the older female mosquitoes that transmit pathogens. However, methods to monitor changes to mosquito age structure are currently inadequate for programmatic implementation. Female mosquitoes generally mate a single time soon after emergence and draw down spermatozoa reserves with each oviposition cycle. Here, we demonstrate that measuring spermatozoa quantity in female Anopheles mosquitoes is an effective approach to assess mosquito age. Using multiplexed qPCR targeted at male spermatozoa, we show that Y-linked genes in female mosquitoes are exclusively found in the spermatheca, the organ that houses spermatozoa, and the quantity of these gene sequences significantly declines with age. The method can accurately identify mosquitoes more than 10 days old and thus old enough to potentially transmit pathogens harbored in the salivary glands during blood feeding. Furthermore, mosquito populations that differ by 10% in daily survivorship have a high likelihood of being distinguished using modest sample sizes, making this approach scalable for assessing the efficacy of vector intervention control programs.
| Item ID: | 75474 |
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| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 2045-2322 |
| Copyright Information: | © The Author(s) 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Date Deposited: | 13 Jul 2022 08:08 |
| FoR Codes: | 42 HEALTH SCIENCES > 4202 Epidemiology > 420207 Major global burdens of disease @ 50% 31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3109 Zoology > 310913 Invertebrate biology @ 50% |
| SEO Codes: | 20 HEALTH > 2004 Public health (excl. specific population health) > 200404 Disease distribution and transmission (incl. surveillance and response) @ 60% 28 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 2801 Expanding knowledge > 280102 Expanding knowledge in the biological sciences @ 40% |
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