Antennal transcriptome profiles of anopheline mosquitoes reveal human host olfactory specialization in Anopheles gambiae

BMC Genomics

Research Article

David C Rinker¹  Antonis Rokas²  Laurence J Zwiebel³  Xiaofan Zhou⁴  Ronald Jason Pitts⁴ 

[1] Center for Human Genetics Research, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee, USA;Center for Human Genetics Research, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee, USA;Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA;Center for Human Genetics Research, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee, USA;Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA;Department of Pharmacology, Vanderbilt Brain Institute, Program in Developmental Biology and Institutes of Chemical Biology and Global Health, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee, USA;Department of Biological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA;

关键词: Anopheles;    Mosquito;    Antenna;    Transcriptome;    Olfaction;    Malaria;    Host-seeking;    Odorant receptor;    Molecular evolution;    RNAseq;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2164-14-749

 received in 2013-07-11, accepted in 2013-10-22,  发布年份 2013

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundTwo sibling members of the Anopheles gambiae species complex display notable differences in female blood meal preferences. An. gambiae s.s. has a well-documented preference for feeding upon human hosts, whereas An. quadriannulatus feeds on vertebrate/mammalian hosts, with only opportunistic feeding upon humans. Because mosquito host-seeking behaviors are largely driven by the sensory modality of olfaction, we hypothesized that hallmarks of these divergent host seeking phenotypes will be in evidence within the transcriptome profiles of the antennae, the mosquito’s principal chemosensory appendage.ResultsTo test this hypothesis, we have sequenced antennal mRNA of non-bloodfed females from each species and observed a number of distinct quantitative and qualitative differences in their chemosensory gene repertoires. In both species, these gene families show higher rates of sequence polymorphisms than the overall rates in their respective transcriptomes, with potentially important divergences between the two species. Moreover, quantitative differences in odorant receptor transcript abundances have been used to model potential distinctions in volatile odor receptivity between the two sibling species of anophelines.ConclusionThis analysis suggests that the anthropophagic behavior of An. gambiae s.s. reflects the differential distribution of olfactory receptors in the antenna, likely resulting from a co-option and refinement of molecular components common to both species. This study improves our understanding of the molecular evolution of chemoreceptors in closely related anophelines and suggests possible mechanisms that underlie the behavioral distinctions in host seeking that, in part, account for the differential vectorial capacity of these mosquitoes.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Rinker et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.