Hall David R, Johnson Rebecca M, Kwon Hyeogsun, Ferdous Zannatul, Laredo-Tiscareño S Viridiana, Blitvich Bradley J, Brackney Doug E, Smith Ryan C
Interdepartmental Program in Genetics and Genomics, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA.
Department of Plant Pathology, Entomology and Microbiology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA.
Nat Commun. 2025 Jul 1;16(1):5891. doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-61139-9.
Mosquito-borne arboviruses cause more than 400 million annual infections, yet despite their public health importance, the mechanisms by which arboviruses infect and disseminate in the mosquito host are not well understood. Here, we provide evidence that dengue virus and Zika virus actively infect Aedes aegypti hemocytes and demonstrate, through phagocyte depletion, that hemocytes facilitate virus infection to peripheral tissues including the ovaries and salivary glands. Adoptive transfer experiments further reveal that virus-infected hemocytes efficiently confer virus infection to naïve recipient mosquitoes. Together, these data support a model of arbovirus dissemination where infected hemocytes enhance virus infection of mosquito tissues required for transmission, which parallels vertebrate systems where immune cell populations promote virus dissemination. This study significantly advances our understanding of virus infection dynamics in the mosquito host and highlights potential conserved roles of immune cells in arbovirus infection across vertebrate and invertebrate systems.
蚊媒虫媒病毒每年导致超过4亿人感染，然而，尽管它们对公共卫生具有重要意义，但虫媒病毒在蚊子宿主中感染和传播的机制仍未得到充分了解。在这里，我们提供证据表明登革热病毒和寨卡病毒可主动感染埃及伊蚊血细胞，并通过吞噬细胞耗竭证明，血细胞促进病毒感染包括卵巢和唾液腺在内的外周组织。过继转移实验进一步表明，病毒感染的血细胞能有效地将病毒感染传递给未感染的受体蚊子。总之，这些数据支持了一种虫媒病毒传播模型，即受感染的血细胞增强了病毒对传播所需的蚊子组织的感染，这与脊椎动物系统中免疫细胞群体促进病毒传播的情况相似。这项研究显著推进了我们对蚊子宿主中病毒感染动态的理解，并突出了免疫细胞在脊椎动物和无脊椎动物系统中虫媒病毒感染中潜在的保守作用。
