Pinch Matthew, Mitra Soumi, Rodriguez Stacy D, Li Yiyi, Kandel Yashoda, Dungan Barry, Holguin F Omar, Attardo Geoffrey M, Hansen Immo A
Department of Biology, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, United States.
Department of Computer Science, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, United States.
Front Insect Sci. 2021 Jun 16;1:693168. doi: 10.3389/finsc.2021.693168. eCollection 2021.
The fat body is considered the insect analog of vertebrate liver and fat tissue. In mosquitoes, a blood meal triggers a series of processes in the fat body that culminate in vitellogenesis, the process of yolk formation. Lipids are stored in the fat body in specialized organelles called lipid droplets that change in size depending on the nutritional and metabolic status of the insect. We surveyed lipid droplets in female fat body during a reproductive cycle using confocal microscopy and analyzed the dynamic changes in the fat body lipidome during this process using LC/MS. We found that lipid droplets underwent dynamic changes in volume after the mosquito took a blood meal. The lipid composition found in the fat body is quite complex with 117 distinct lipids that fall into 19 classes and sublcasses. Our results demonstrate that the lipid composition of the fat body is complex as most lipid classes underwent significant changes over the course of the vitellogenic cycle. This study lays the foundation for identifying unknown biochemical pathways active in the mosquito fat body, that are high-value targets for the development of novel mosquito control strategies.
脂肪体被认为是昆虫体内与脊椎动物肝脏和脂肪组织相对应的部分。在蚊子中，一次血餐会引发脂肪体中的一系列过程，最终导致卵黄生成，即卵黄形成的过程。脂质储存在脂肪体中称为脂滴的特殊细胞器中，脂滴的大小会根据昆虫的营养和代谢状态而变化。我们使用共聚焦显微镜观察了雌性蚊子在生殖周期中脂肪体中的脂滴，并使用液相色谱/质谱联用技术（LC/MS）分析了这一过程中脂肪体脂质组的动态变化。我们发现，蚊子吸食血液后，脂滴的体积发生了动态变化。脂肪体中发现的脂质组成非常复杂，有117种不同的脂质，分为19个类别和亚类。我们的结果表明，脂肪体的脂质组成很复杂，因为大多数脂质类别在卵黄生成周期中都发生了显著变化。这项研究为识别蚊子脂肪体中活跃的未知生化途径奠定了基础，这些途径是开发新型蚊虫控制策略的高价值靶点。
