Program in Public Health, University of California Irvine, Irvine, California, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2013 Jul 23;8(7):e69439. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0069439. Print 2013.
Information on population age structure of mosquitoes under natural conditions is fundamental to the understanding of vectorial capacity and crucial for assessing the impact of vector control measures on malaria transmission. Transcriptional profiling has been proposed as a method for predicting mosquito age for Aedes and Anopheles mosquitoes, however, whether this new method is adequate for natural conditions is unknown. This study tests the applicability of transcriptional profiling for age-grading of Anopheles gambiae, the most important malaria vector in Africa. The transcript abundance of two An. gambiae genes, AGAP009551 and AGAP011615, was measured during aging under laboratory and field conditions in three mosquito strains. Age-dependent monotonic changes in transcript levels were observed in all strains evaluated. These genes were validated as age-grading biomarkers using the mark, release and recapture (MRR) method. The MRR method determined a good correspondence between actual and predicted age, and thus demonstrated the value of age classifications derived from the transcriptional profiling of these two genes. The technique was used to establish the age structure of mosquito populations from two malaria-endemic areas in western Kenya. The population age structure determined by the transcriptional profiling method was consistent with that based on mosquito parity. This study demonstrates that the transcription profiling method based on two genes is valuable for age determination of natural mosquitoes, providing a new approach for determining a key life history trait of malaria vectors.
关于蚊子在自然条件下的种群年龄结构的信息是理解媒介能力的基础，对于评估媒介控制措施对疟疾传播的影响至关重要。转录谱分析已被提议作为预测按蚊和疟蚊年龄的一种方法，然而，这种新方法是否适用于自然条件尚不清楚。本研究测试了转录谱分析用于年龄分级非洲最重要的疟疾媒介按蚊的适用性。在实验室和野外条件下，在三个蚊子品系中测量了两个按蚊基因 AGAP009551 和 AGAP011615 的转录丰度随年龄的变化。在所有评估的品系中，都观察到转录水平随年龄的单调变化。使用标记、释放和重捕 (MRR) 方法验证了这些基因作为年龄分级生物标志物的有效性。MRR 方法确定了实际年龄和预测年龄之间的良好对应关系，从而证明了从这两个基因的转录谱分析得出的年龄分类的价值。该技术用于确定肯尼亚西部两个疟疾流行地区的蚊子种群的年龄结构。基于转录谱分析方法确定的种群年龄结构与基于蚊子生殖力的年龄结构一致。这项研究表明，基于两个基因的转录谱分析方法对于自然蚊子的年龄确定是有价值的，为确定疟疾媒介的一个关键生活史特征提供了一种新方法。
