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AMES, Iowa – A new study that details mosquito immune cells may shed light on insect immune systems and how mosquitoes transmit the parasites that cause malaria.
A new study, recently published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal eLife, identifies several new forms of mosquito immune cells, providing new clarity in the mosquito immune system. Immune cells play a central role in the mosquito immune response against malaria parasites and viruses after absorption of these pathogens when they feed on an infected person. It’s an area of study that has remained poorly understood due to the lack of genetic tools, said Ryan Smith, associate professor of entomology at Iowa State University and lead author of the study.
“These experiments lay the groundwork for a better understanding of how these immune cells work, which could lead to a future where humans are able to render mosquitoes incapable of transmitting disease,” Smith said.
The new study used single-cell RNA sequencing, a relatively new technique that allows researchers to examine cellular messages within individual cells, to characterize mosquito immune cells called hemocytes. The study found that mosquito hemocytes exhibit greater complexity than previously thought, evidence of cell differentiation, and some cells may even undergo a maturation process. The authors also provided a comparative analysis to single-cell studies in other insect systems, highlighting important similarities and differences between mosquitoes and other insects. The new study is an important first step in the future exploration of mosquito immune systems, which could be important to better understand how mosquitoes transmit pathogens, such as malaria parasites, to humans through their bite.
“There is a lot of evidence to suggest that mosquito immune cells are really essential to their ability to transmit disease,” Smith said. “From that perspective, we don’t know much about the molecular aspect of how these immune cells look. “
Previous evidence suggests that immune cells mediate disease pathways in mosquitoes and play a critical role in killing multistage malaria parasites in the host mosquito. The new study paves the way for future research to answer these questions, he said.
Smith even envisions a future, although it is still years away, where this line of research could lead to the production of mosquitoes that are genetically engineered to overexpress certain populations of immune cells that reduce a mosquito’s ability to transmit pathogens. that cause mosquito-borne diseases. These resistant mosquitoes could then be introduced into populations of wild mosquitoes to reproduce and disseminate these genetic traits. The result could be mosquito populations less likely to spread disease to humans, although Smith cautions that this is all purely moot at this point.
Funding for the study comes from the Swedish Society for Medical Research, the Swedish Research Council and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Smith’s co-authors include Hyeog-Sun Kwon in Iowa State; Mubasher Mohammed and Johan Ankarklev from Stockholm University, Sweden; and Oscar Franzen from the Karolinska Institute, Sweden. Additional support for the project came from Rick Masonbrink and Andrew Severin of the Iowa State Genome Informatics Facility.
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