Identification of blood meal sources in the main African malaria mosquito vector by MALDI-TOF MS

Abstract

BackgroundThe identification of blood meal sources in malaria vectors is critical to better understanding host/vector interactions and malaria epidemiology and control. Currently, the identification of mosquito blood meal origins is based on time-consuming and costly techniques such as precipitin tests, ELISA and molecular tools. Although these tools have been validated to identify the blood meal and trophic preferences of female Anopheles mosquitoes, they present several limitations. Recently, matrix-assisted, laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) was successfully used as a quick and accurate tool for arthropod identification, including mosquitoes. The aim of the present work was to test whether MALDI-TOF MS could also be applied to identification of blood meal sources from engorged mosquitoes.MethodsAbdomen proteins extracted from Anopheles gambiae (stricto sensu, S molecular form) that were either unengorged or artificially engorged on seven distinct types of vertebrate blood (human, horse, sheep, rabbit, mouse, rat, dog) were submitted for MALDI-TOF MS.ResultsThe comparison of mass spectrometry (MS) spectra from mosquito abdomens collected 1 h post-feeding, were able to discriminate blood meal origins. Moreover, using Aedes albopictus specimens, abdominal protein MS spectra from engorged mosquitoes were found specific to host blood source and independent of the mosquito species. A sequential analysis revealed stability of mosquito abdominal protein spectra up to 24 h post-feeding.ConclusionsThese results indicate that MALDI-TOF MS could determine feeding patterns of freshly engorged mosquitoes up to 24 h post-blood meal. The MALDI-TOF MS technique appears to be an efficient tool for large epidemiological surveillance of vector-borne diseases and outbreak source identification.

The Use of Xenosurveillance to Detect Human Bacteria, Parasites, and Viruses in Mosquito Bloodmeals

“…33 Multiple studies show the success of blood source identification using DNA extracted from the bloodmeal of Anopheles mosquitoes significantly decreased after 30 hours. 34,35 These data, along with previous field experience, 4 demonstrate the amount of time to capture a bloodfed An. gambiae mosquito indoors that can be used for xenosurveillance is about 1 day.…”

Biotic and abiotic factors shape the microbiota of wild‐caught populations of the arbovirus vector Culicoides imicola

“…In general, the host diversity identified in C. imicola was higher at the protein than at DNA levels. These results could be explained be several factors, such as the higher resolution of mass spectrometry (MS) when compared with PCR (Niare et al, ), and the longer stability for proteins than DNA in blood‐feeding arthropods (Martinez‐de la Puente et al, ; Villar et al, ). These results supported the combination of PCR and proteomics‐based methods for a better characterization of host bloodmeal sources in blood‐feeding insects.…”

Comparative analysis of storage conditions and homogenization methods for tick and flea species for identification by MALDI‐TOF MS

“…The implementation of specific tick leg MS spectra into the reference database thus appears indispensable for future reliable MALDI-TOF MS specimen identification based on their leg MS profiles, whether crushed manually or automatically. Nevertheless, the advantage of the use of arthropod legs for their identification is the preservation of nearly the entire specimen for others analyses (Fotso et al, 2014;Niare et al, 2016). Interestingly, the parameters of each apparatus for the automated homogenization of mosquitoes (adults and larva) (Nebbak et al, 2016), ticks and fleas, were unchanged, making the sample preparation easier.…”