Cis-acting mutation and duplication: History of molecular evolution in a P450 haplotype responsible for insecticide resistance in Culex quinquefasciatus.

A cytochrome P450 gene, Cyp9m10, is more than 200-fold overexpressed in a pyrethroid resistant strain of Culex quinquefasciatus, JPal-per. The haplotype of this strain contains two copies of Cyp9m10 resulted from recent tandem duplication. In this study, we discovered and isolated a Cyp9m10 haplotype closely related to this duplicated Cyp9m10 haplotype from JHB, a strain used for the recent genome project for this mosquito species. The isolated haplotype (JHB-NIID-B haplotype) shared the same insertion of a transposable element upstream of the coding region with JPal-per strain but not duplicated. The JHB-NIID-B haplotype was considered to have diverged from the JPal-per lineage just before the duplication event. Cyp9m10 was moderately overexpressed in larvae with the JHB-NIID-B haplotype. The overexpressions in JHB-NIID-B and JPal-per haplotypes were developmentally regulated in similar pattern indicating both haplotypes share a common cis-acting mutation responsible for the overexpressions. The isolated moderately overexpressed haplotype conferred resistance, however, its efficacy was relatively small. We hypothesized that the first cis-acting mutation modified the consequence of the subsequent duplication in JPal-per lineage to confer stronger phenotypic effect than that if it occurred before the first cis-acting mutation.