The FINANCIAL — Eegg development in the mosquito species primarily responsible for spreading malaria depends on a switch in the female that is turned on by a male hormone delivered during sex.
The FINANCIAL — Eegg development in the mosquito species primarily responsible for spreading malaria depends on a switch in the female that is turned on by a male hormone delivered during sex. Blocking the activation of this switch could impair the ability of the species, Anopheles gambiae, to reproduce, and may be a viable future strategy for mosquito and malaria control, according to a new study led by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and University of Perugia (UNIPG) researchers.
“These findings represent a significant step forward in our understanding of how these devastating malaria vectors reproduce,” said Flaminia Catteruccia, associate professor of immunology and infectious diseases at HSPH and UNIPG.
Malaria is a leading cause of death in tropical and subtropical regions. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, malaria claims nearly 660,000 lives per year, 90% of them in Africa—and most of them children. There were an estimated 216 million malaria cases worldwide in 2010, mostly among pregnant women and children, according to the President and Fellows of Harvard College.
The researchers found that egg development depends on a switch—the MISO protein—in the female that is turned on by a male hormone delivered during sex. Male-transferred 20E essentially acts as a “mating signal” for the female to produce more eggs. “How males contributed to egg development had been previously unknown; with the identification of the molecular players of this male-female interaction we can now find ways to switch off the signal and prevent females from reproducing,” said Catteruccia.
This new finding holds promise for the development of new tools for controlling malaria-transmitting mosquito populations, the researchers said.
“This is the first time, in any insect species, that a male hormone has been shown to directly interact with a female protein and alter the ability of the female to reproduce,” said co-author Francesco Baldini, a UNIPG graduate student who performed part of the analyses as a visiting scientist at HSPH.
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