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Building a Better Mosquito: Identifying the Genes Enabling Malaria and Dengue Fever Resistance in A. gambiae and A. aegypti Mosquitoes
Published on: July 4, 2007
The Mosquito Immune System and the Life of Dengue Virus: What We Know and Do Not Know
Debica Mukherjee1, Sandeepan Das2, Feroza Begum3
1CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, 4, Raja S.C. Mullick Road, Jadavpur, Kolkata 700032, West Bengal, India. debicamukherjee@csiriicb.res.in.
Abstract:
Flaviviruses are largely transmitted to humans by their arthropod vectors such as mosquitoes or ticks. The dengue virus (DENV) is one of the members of the family Flaviviridae and is the causative agent of dengue fever. In the mosquito vector, DENV enters through viremic blood meal and replicates in the mid-gut. Newly formed virion particles circulate to various mosquito organs and get transmitted to the next host in subsequent bites. Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus have intricate immune control to allow DENV production at a sub-pathogenic level. In the mosquito, antimicrobial peptides (AMP) and RNA inference (RNAi) are the two main antiviral strategies used against DENV. Apart from innate immunity, mosquito resident microbes play a significant role in modulating DENV replication. In this review, we discuss different immune mechanisms and preventive strategies that act against DENV in two of its vectors: Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus.
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