Of Genes and Genomes: Mosquito Evolution and Diversity

Ruzzante, Livio; Reijnders, Maarten J.M.F.; Waterhouse, Robert M.

doi:10.1016/j.pt.2018.10.003

Cited by 41 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 124 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…For a genus such as Anopheles with already more than 20 genome assemblies available [28], multi-species comparative analyses to identify potentially neighbouring scaffolds could facilitate assembly upgrades with improved contiguities. While genomic rearrangements can and do occur, multiple homologous regions with conserved orders and orientations, i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolutionary superscaffolding and chromosome anchoring to improve Anopheles genome assemblies

et al. 2020

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

BackgroundNew sequencing technologies have lowered financial barriers to whole genome sequencing, but resulting assemblies are often fragmented and far from ‘finished’. Updating multi-scaffold drafts to chromosome-level status can be achieved through experimental mapping or re-sequencing efforts. Avoiding the costs associated with such approaches, comparative genomic analysis of gene order conservation (synteny) to predict scaffold neighbours (adjacencies) offers a potentially useful complementary method for improving draft assemblies.ResultsWe evaluated and employed 3 gene synteny-based methods applied to 21 Anopheles mosquito assemblies to produce consensus sets of scaffold adjacencies. For subsets of the assemblies, we integrated these with additional supporting data to confirm and complement the synteny-based adjacencies: 6 with physical mapping data that anchor scaffolds to chromosome locations, 13 with paired-end RNA sequencing (RNAseq) data, and 3 with new assemblies based on re-scaffolding or long-read data. Our combined analyses produced 20 new superscaffolded assemblies with improved contiguities: 7 for which assignments of non-anchored scaffolds to chromosome arms span more than 75% of the assemblies, and a further 7 with chromosome anchoring including an 88% anchored Anopheles arabiensis assembly and, respectively, 73% and 84% anchored assemblies with comprehensively updated cytogenetic photomaps for Anopheles funestus and Anopheles stephensi.ConclusionsExperimental data from probe mapping, RNAseq, or long-read technologies, where available, all contribute to successful upgrading of draft assemblies. Our evaluations show that gene synteny-based computational methods represent a valuable alternative or complementary approach. Our improved Anopheles reference assemblies highlight the utility of applying comparative genomics approaches to improve community genomic resources.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolutionary superscaffolding and chromosome anchoring to improve Anopheles genome assemblies

et al. 2020

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In the present study, we investigated the foraging and navigation behavior of six species of mosquito larvae, drawn from the three major disease vector genera Aedes, Anopheles and Culex (Ruzzante et al, 2019) (Fig. 1A).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distinct navigation behaviors in Aedes, Anopheles, and Culex mosquito larvae

Lutz

Riffell

2020

Journal of Experimental Biology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Mosquitoes spread deadly diseases that impact millions of people every year. Understanding mosquito physiology and behavior is vital for public health and disease prevention. However, many important questions remain unanswered in the field of mosquito neuroethology, particularly in our understanding of the larval stage. In this study, we investigate the innate exploration behavior of six different species of disease vector mosquito larvae. We show that these species exhibit strikingly different movement paths, corresponding to a wide range of exploration behaviors. We also investigated the response of each species to an appetitive food cue, aversive cue or neutral control. In contrast to the large differences in exploration behavior, all species appeared to gather near preferred cues through random aggregation rather than directed navigation, and exhibited slower speeds once encountering food patches. Our results identify key behavioral differences among important disease vector species, and suggest that navigation and exploration among even closely related mosquito species may be much more distinct than previously thought.

show abstract

“…Our results illustrate how such weighting is performed in one species, providing a first glimpse into how general and contingent cues are integrated to produce host-seeking behavior in mosquitoes. With the rapid development of genetic and neuroscience tools in mosquitoes [27][28][29][30], we are poised to uncover the neuronal mechanisms underlying multimodal integration in these charismatic and deadly insects. S1-S3).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

General visual and contingent thermal cues interact to elicit attraction in female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes

Liu

Vosshall

2019

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes use multiple sensory modalities to hunt human hosts to obtain a blood-meal for egg production. Attractive cues include carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), a major component of exhaled breath [1,2]; heat elevated above ambient temperature, signifying warm-blooded skin [3,4]; and dark visual contrast [5,6], proposed to bridge long-range olfactory and short-range thermal cues [7]. Any of these sensory cues in isolation is an incomplete signal of a human host, and so a mosquito must integrate multi-modal sensory information before committing to approaching and biting a person [8]. Here, we study the interaction of visual cues, heat, and CO 2 to investigate the contributions of human-associated stimuli to host-seeking decisions. We show that tethered flying mosquitoes strongly orient toward dark visual contrast regardless of CO 2 stimulation and internal host-seeking status. This suggests that attraction to visual contrast is general, and not contingent on other host cues. In free-flight experiments with CO 2 , adding a dark contrasting visual cue to a warmed surface enhanced host-seeking. Moderate warmth became more attractive to mosquitoes, and mosquitoes aggregated on the cue at all non-noxious temperatures. Gr3 mutants, unable to detect CO 2 , were lured to the visual cue at ambient temperatures, but fled and did not return when the surface was warmed to host-like temperatures. This suggests that attraction to thermal cues is contingent on the presence of the additional human sensory cue CO 2 . Our results illustrate that mosquitoes integrate general attractive visual stimuli with the context-dependent thermal stimuli to seek promising sites for blood-feeding.

show abstract

Of Genes and Genomes: Mosquito Evolution and Diversity

Cited by 41 publications

References 124 publications

Evolutionary superscaffolding and chromosome anchoring to improve Anopheles genome assemblies

Evolutionary superscaffolding and chromosome anchoring to improve Anopheles genome assemblies

Distinct navigation behaviors in Aedes, Anopheles, and Culex mosquito larvae

General visual and contingent thermal cues interact to elicit attraction in female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About