The Developmental Transcriptome ofAe. albopictus,a Major Worldwide Human Disease Vector

Abstract

Aedes albopictus mosquitoes are important vectors for a number of human pathogens including the Zika, dengue, and chikungunya viruses. Capable of displacing Aedes aegypti populations, it adapts to cooler environments which increases its geographical range and transmission potential. There are limited control strategies for Aedes albopictus mosquitoes which is likely attributed to the lack of comprehensive biological studies on this emerging vector. To fill this void, here using RNAseq we characterized Aedes albopictus mRNA expression profiles at 47 distinct time points throughout development providing the first high-resolution comprehensive view of the developmental transcriptome of this worldwide human disease vector. This enabled us to identify several patterns of shared gene expression among tissues as well as sex-specific expression patterns. Moreover, to illuminate the similarities and differences between Aedes aegypti, a related human disease vector, we performed a comparative analysis using the two developmental transcriptomes. We identify life stages were the two species exhibited significant differential expression among orthologs. These findings provide insights into the similarities and differences between Aedes albopictus and Aedes aegypti mosquito biology. In summary, the results generated from this study should form the basis for future investigations on the biology of Aedes albopictus mosquitoes and provide a goldmine resource for the development of transgene-based vector control strategies.

Improved reference genome of the arboviral vector Aedes albopictus

“…Pairwise correlation analysis revealed that almost every developmental stage is most highly correlated with its adjacent stage and is very similar to what was previously found (Additional file 1: Fig. S6) [63]. To visualize the various patterns of gene expression and the relationships between the samples, hierarchical clustering and principal component analyses were performed (Additional file 1: Fig.…”

“…The analyses of gene expression profiles across all developmental time points showed that the number of expressed genes (transcripts per million ≥ 1) gradually increases through embryogenesis, reaching its highest peak at 68-72 h (Additional file 10). As previously observed, there is an increase in the number of expressed genes during the early pupal stages, and the male germline expresses the highest number of genes among all samples [63]. After a blood meal, female mosquitoes undergo a series of physiological changes to support oogenesis.…”

“…AalbF2 and its predicted gene models served as the basis to establish a comprehensive global view of gene expression dynamics throughout Ae. albopictus development taking advantage of recently produced Illumina RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) data from 47 unique samples representing 34 distinct stages of mosquito development [63] (Fig. 5a).…”

“…albopictus mosquitoes from San Gabriel Valley, located in the Los Angeles County, CA, for RNA extraction. Mosquito rearing, total RNA isolation, and RNA-seq were carried out as previously described [63]. RNA-seq libraries were aligned to AalbF2 using STAR aligner [104].…”

Programmable RNA Targeting using CasRx in Flies

“…The RNA integrity was assessed using an RNA 6000 Pico Kit for Bioanalyzer (Agilent Technologies #5067-1513). The RNA-seq libraries were constructed using NEBNext Ultra II RNA Library Prep Kit for Illumina (NEB #E7770) following the manufacturer's instructions [51]. The libraries were sequenced on an Illumina HiSeq2500 in single read mode with a read length of 50 nt and a sequencing depth of 20 million reads per library following the manufacturer's instructions.…”