{"id":161255,"date":"2025-11-03T22:51:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T22:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/161255\/"},"modified":"2025-11-03T22:51:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T22:51:11","slug":"first-ever-cellular-atlas-of-the-aedes-aegypti-mosquito","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/161255\/","title":{"rendered":"First-Ever Cellular Atlas of the Aedes aegypti Mosquito"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"mosquito\"<\/a>Confocal image of a male mosquito antenna, used to validate a unique chemoreceptor co-expression pattern identified in the mosquito atlas. [Alexandra DeFoe\/The Rockefeller University]<\/p>\n

The first-ever cellular atlas of the\u00a0Aedes aegypti\u00a0mosquito, which transmits more diseases than any other species of its kind, has been created. The Mosquito Cell Atlas provides cellular-level resolution of gene expression in every mosquito tissue, from the antennae down to the legs.<\/p>\n

The atlas was recently published in Cell in the paper, \u201cA single-nucleus transcriptomic atlas of the adult Aedes aegypti mosquito<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a comprehensive snapshot of what every cell in the mosquito is doing as far as expressing genes,\u201d says Leslie Vosshall, PhD, professor at The Rockefeller University and vice president and CSO at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. \u201cIt\u2019s a real achievement because we profiled so many different types of tissues in both males and females.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most prior work building mosquito atlases has focused on female mosquitoes, leaving out males. \u201cBecause the female is the one that\u2019s spreading all the pathogens, there is an enormous bias toward looking at the biology of the female and very little information about the male,\u201d Vosshall notes. \u201cSo we wanted to be inclusive and fill in the gap.\u201d<\/p>\n

The atlas yielded new insights including identifying novel cell types and expanding the understanding of sensory neuron organization of chemoreceptors across all sensory tissues. Also, the work uncovers differences\u2014and unexpected similarities\u2014between male and female mosquitoes including the changes in genetic expression that the female mosquito brain undergoes after a blood feeding.<\/p>\n

More specifically, the atlas revealed male-specific cells and sexually dimorphic gene expression in the antenna and brain. In female mosquitoes, the researchers found that \u201cglial cells, rather than neurons, undergo the most extensive transcriptional changes in the brain following blood feeding.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team used single-nucleus RNA sequencing (snRNA-seq) \u00a0to create a large dataset of more than 367,000 nuclei from 19 types of mosquito tissues selected across five biological themes: major body segments; sensation and host seeking; viral infection; reproduction; and the central nervous system. They found 69 cell types grouped into 14 major cell categories, many of which had never been seen before.<\/p>\n

Among the most striking findings was the pervasiveness of polymodal sensory neurons. Previous research from the Vosshall lab had found that the antenna and maxillary palps were packed with these neurons, but now that they were able to look organism-wide, they found them everywhere, including the nose, tongue, and legs.<\/p>\n

Brain changes<\/strong>, <\/strong>behavior shifts<\/strong><\/p>\n

After feeding, a female mosquito loses all interest in humans and other hosts; her focus becomes developing and laying eggs.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow does this incredibly strong drive to bite people get turned off?\u201d Vosshall says.<\/p>\n

To find out, the team examined the gene expression of female mosquito brains at 3, 12, 24, and 48 hours after a blood feeding. They found changes in gene expression in all time periods, which peaked after the first few hours and gradually abated. Most of the early expression changes were of genes being upregulated, while later time periods showed a mix of both up- and downregulation.<\/p>\n

Although neurons account for roughly 90% of mosquito brain cells, it was the glia\u2014support cells that account for less than 10%\u2014that underwent large shifts in gene expression.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe glia are completely rewired during this time when the females lose interest in people,\u201d Vosshall says.<\/p>\n

The team also found that female and male mosquitoes\u2019 cellular makeup is largely identical, aside from small clusters of sex-specific cells and reproductive organs. One exception was found exclusively in the male antenna, which is largely unexplored. \u201cA small group of cells is marked by the expression of a single gene that\u2019s not expressed in any female tissue,\u201d Vosshall says. \u201cIf we hadn\u2019t compared male and female gene expression, we never would\u2019ve spotted them.\u201d Their function remains to be determined.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a global resource that has been open to everyone since the very inception of the project in 2021, so many people are already using it,\u201d Vosshall adds. \u201cWe\u2019re excited to see the discoveries that will come from it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The\u00a0dataset<\/a>\u00a0is freely available to all researchers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Confocal image of a male mosquito antenna, used to validate a unique chemoreceptor co-expression pattern identified in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161256,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[18,19,4381,17,5,34270,133,5632],"class_list":{"0":"post-161255","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-infectious-diseases","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-omics","14":"tag-science","15":"tag-topics"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115488219960503312","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}