About Full-Anopheles

Anopheles mosquito

Mosquitoes and flies are closely related insects, Diptera (di: two, ptera: wing) that have a pair of wings. The hindwings have evolved into a pair of halteres, small knobbed structures that function as vibrating structure gyroscope and help aerobatic flying.
Both male and female mosquitoes feed on nectar and only female suck blood to obtain supplemental nutrition (proteins and iron) to develop eggs. Malaria parasites can develop only in Anopheles mosquitoes, which lay eggs on clean water with waterweed. Larvae feed on debris and organic substance in water and develop into pupae after four molting in about seven to ten days. After emergence from pupae, adult females mate with males, usually only once in the case of Anopheles mosquitoes and then suck blood. After two to three days of rest, females lay 50 to 200 eggs. Then they suck blood and lay eggs again, repeating this cycle four to five times during life. Both parasite maturation time and mosquito life time depend on the ambient temperature and are very close with each other. Transmission efficiency also depends on biting behavior, i.e., whether they prefer humans or animals. They fly 500 to 1,000 meters and bite at dusk and dawn, i.e., crepuscular.
Today, pesticide impregnated mosquito bed nets are used for control of malaria along with indoor residual sprapying of DDT.

Production of Anopheles stephensi full-length cDNA library

Anopheles stephensi eggs were kindly provided by Prof. Robert Sinden of Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine in December 2006 and the mosquitoes have been maintained in the insectary of Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine.

A full-length cDNA library was produced from the combined larvae of L1, L2, L3 and L4 stage using the oligo-capping method in Institute of Medical Science, The University of Tokyo.

Acknowledgements

This work was partly supported by a grant for Asia-Africa S & T Strategic Corporation Promotion Program, Special Coordination Fund for Promotion of Science and Technology, "Development of control methods against tropical infectious diseases based on ultra-high-speed DNA sequencing technology." from The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan.