The Achilles' heel of Anopheles? (LEGOmics)

JUAN R. GIROTTI; GARETH J. LYCETT; M.P. JUÁREZ; MICHALIS AIVALIOTIS; SERGIO J. MIJAILOVSKY; HILARY RANSON; VASILEIA BALABANIDOU; ANASTASIA KAMPOURAKI; M. PATRICIA JUAREZ; JOHN VONTAS

Kolymbari

Conferencia; Molecular and population biology of mosquitoes and other disease vectors: vector and disease control. EMBO conference.; 2017

EMBO

The most effective way to eradicate mosquito-borne diseases, as malaria is still remaining the use of insecticides. However, currently used insecticides are under the threat of rising resistance in vector populations. A very recently published study of our team revealed a novel mechanism of pyrethroid resistance by reduced uptake of the drug through the leg cuticle. More specifically, we demonstrated that resistant mosquitoes possess thicker leg cuticles, mainly because of enriched deposition of hydrocarbons to their outermost cuticular layer. We first investigated if this mechanism is expanded to other multi-resistant mosquito populations from Africa. Indeed, the hydrocarbon levels of a highly multi-resistant An. gambiae strain was significantly higher than those of the susceptible strain. Subsequently, we conducted targeted (leg-specific) proteomics, to identify novel proteins implicated in resistance. In the future an integrated multi-omics approach focusing on the resistant mosquitos? super-legs (LEGOmics) will be performed.