CHARACTERIZATION AND BIOINFORMATIC ANALYSIS OF microRNAs IN DELTAMETHRIN-RESISTANT AND SUSCEPTIBLE POPULATION OF THE CHAGAS DISEASE VECTOR Triatoma infestans

CINTIA JUDITH FERNÁNDEZ; ANTONIO GARZÓN; MARTA GEORGINA NICOLINO; LOURDES EUGENIA CÓRDOBA; BEATRIZ ALICIA GARCÍA; ALICIA RAQUEL PÉREZ DE ROSAS; ORNELLA ALESSANDRONI; MARÍA MERCEDES STROPPPA

Congreso; XIV Congreso de la Asociación Argentina de Bioinformática y Biología Computacional; 2024

Triatoma infestans is the main vector of Chagas disease in South America. Failures in vectorcontrol have been observed due to the development of insecticide resistance. Recentpublications have evidenced the involvement of microRNAs (miRNAs) in regulating theexpression of genes involved in insecticide resistance in other insect species. With the aimof elucidating the involvement of miRNAs in pyrethroid resistance in T. infestans, it wasproposed the first large-scale characterization of miRNAs expressed in a susceptible and adeltamethrin-resistant population and the identification of those miRNAs that are differentiallyexpressed. Total RNA was extracted from fifth instar nymphs? fat bodies and was sent to thespecialized miRNA sequencing service of ArrayStar (USA). The sequencing was performedin three biological replicates from each population. The bioinformatics analysis were carriedout following the bases of nf-core/smrnaseq pipeline, employing tools to process the reads,identify and predict novel miRNAs (Softwares: FasTQC, Cutadapt, Bowtie2 and miRDeep2).Subsequently, the differential expression of miRNAs between populations was determinedusing the Empirical Differential Gene Expression Analysis (EDGE) algorithm, with R (version4.4.1) as the development environment. A total of 110 miRNAs, previously characterized inArthropoda, were identified by the miRDeep2 software and 66 novel miRNAs werepredicted. The results showed significant differences in the expression of seven miRNAs.Among them, six are significantly overexpressed in the pyrethroid-resistant population,suggesting their potential role in regulating genes involved in metabolic resistance toinsecticides, reproduction, cuticle synthesis and the metabolic-reproductive adaptative costassociated with the development of insecticide resistance. The identification of differentiallyexpressed miRNAs in pyrethroid-susceptible and -resistant populations of T. infestans maycontribute to a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved in insecticideresistance.