Mosquito Genetics may Offer Clues to Malaria Control

An African mosquito species originated the ability to transmit malaria during their recent evolution, states new study.

The discovery could have implications for malaria control by enabling researchers to detect and target specific genetic changes associated with the capacity to transmit a parasite.

Malaria - Causes, Symptoms, Diagnosis, Prevention, Treatment
Malaria is caused by a parasite that enters blood through the bite of an infected mosquito. It is characterized by fever, vomiting, shivering, sweating and other symptoms.

Malaria causes as many as 907,000 deaths each year, mostly among children in sub-Saharan Africa. Anopheles mosquitoes, which bite mainly between dusk and dawn, transmit human malaria by spreading Plasmodium parasites that multiply in the human liver and infect red blood cells. But of the more than 400 species of mosquito belonging to the Anopheles genus, only about 20 are effective vectors of human malaria, according to the World Health Organization.

The most dangerous of these is the Anopheles gambiae mosquito species, one of seven in the Anopheles gambiae complex, which was thought to have recently evolved the ability to transmit malaria. However, Virginia Tech scientists' discoveries suggest that this species is actually genetically linked to an older, ancestral lineage.

Scientists used chromosomal analysis to compare gene arrangements for mosquitoes both inside and outside the Anopheles gambiae family to trace the evolutionary connections.

About Mosquito Diseases
Mosquito-borne diseases, like malaria, filaria, dengue, etc are common in places conducive of mosquito breeding. Swamps, ponds and stagnated drainage provide optimal breeding ground for mosquitoes.

"The outside species served as a reference group for understanding the evolutionary relationship among Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes," Kamali said. "Our goal was to determine how different species arose in the Anopheles gambiae complex, as they all look identical, but have different behaviors and capacities to transmit human malaria."

When resolving the Anopheles gambiae evolutionary history, the scientists identified breaks in DNA that lead to new chromosomal arrangements, and used these rearrangements to demonstrate the repeated evolution of the ability to transmit a parasite, in a back-and-forth fashion.

Quiz on Malaria
Malaria is a common parasitic disease of the tropics, resulting in a million deaths every year. It is most commonly found in tropical countries. The symptoms of malaria include fever with chills, headache, muscle aches, tiredness, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Malaria fatalities can be reduced if they are detected early and treated appropriately

"This curious stop-and-go flexibility could help us to better understand the nature of the mosquito's capacity to transmit malaria, and calls into question what is driving the genetic flexibility," Sharakhov said.

The discovery is innovative in the field of genetics research.

Lethal Malaria-transmitting Mosquito Discovered
In western Kenya, entomologists have discovered a potentially dangerous breed of mosquitoes.

"The surprising aspect of the paper is the proposal of an ancestral and relatively ancient 2La polymorphism which arose in a hypothetical ancestor and has been maintained in Anopheles gambiae ever since," said Nora Besansky, the Rev. John Cardinal O'Hara C.S.C. professor of biological sciences at the University of Notre Dame, who was not involved in the study. "If confirmed, this would certainly lend novel insight into the evolutionary dynamics of chromosomal inversions in general, not only in mosquitoes."

Source-Eurekalert