Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowship: Summary
A major human health concern centres on diseases transmitted by blood-feeding insects, including malaria, dengue fever, and filariasis. Declining successes with pesticides necessitate novel vector control approaches with detailed biological understanding facilitating targeted interventions that limit ecological knock-on effects. Growing concerns over global climate change augment the urgency as expanding habitats and rapid adaptability make the threat greater than ever before.
Of ~500 anopheline species, only about two dozen transmit human malaria, with vectorial capacity varying greatly among even very closely-related mosquito species, making the understanding of what defines an effective malaria vector critical to developing successful controls. These variations, and other characteristics such as insecticide resistance and chemosensory abilities, derive from an underlying genetic basis, thus, to address this question requires dissection of genetic determinants of observed diversity in behavioural and physiological responses.
The sequencing of multiple anopheline mosquito genomes has successfuly built extensive genomic data resources to facilitate the examination of the evolution of genetic determinants of vectorial capacity. This includes the development and deployment of computational strategies to interrogate multiple mosquito genomes for patterns of natural selection shaping the repertoire of functional genomic elements governing mosquito biology. The comprehensive, phylogenetically informed, comparative genome analysis of multiple mosquito species with variable vectorial capacities and eco-ethological characteristics significantly advances our understanding of the biology that underlies transmission of vector-borne diseases.
Read more about ANOCAP from the EC's R&I News
Article
published April 25th 2017 - World Malaria Day