Photo by James Gathany
Researchers believe they may have discovered a male-determining gene in the malaria-carrying mosquito species Anopheles gambiae.
The discovery of this gene provides scientists with a foundation for studying male mosquito biology.
And this is significant because male mosquitoes offer the potential to develop novel vector control strategies to combat malaria because males do not feed on blood or transmit disease.
One vector control method under development involves genetic modification of the mosquito to bias the population sex ratio toward males.
Modeling has shown the most efficient means for genetic modification of mosquitoes is engineering a driving Y chromosome.
A molecular-level understanding of the Y chromosome of the malaria-carrying mosquito is important to inform and optimize this type of a strategy.
So Omar Akbari, PhD, of the University of California, Riverside, and his colleagues set out to gain such an understanding.
The team used multiple genome sequencing techniques to identify an extensive dataset of Y chromosome sequences and explore their organization and evolution in the Anopheles gambiae complex, a group of at least 7 morphologically indistinguishable species of mosquitoes in the genus Anopheles.
This revealed that only 1 gene, YG2, is exclusive to the Y chromosome across the species complex and may therefore be a male-determining gene.
Dr Akbari and his colleagues described this discovery in PNAS.