Project

The aim of the project is to identify viral genetic determinants underlying differences of vector competence to yellow fever virus (YFV). We infected different Aedes aegypti mosquito populations collected in Martinique (free of yellow fever) with 5 YFV genotypes and showed that YFV Uganda was well transmitted while YFV Ghana was transmitted by only few populations. Therefore, we infected several African Ae. aegypti populations with the two strains of YFV, yellow fever being endemic to sub-Saharan Africa. We examined mosquitoes at different days post-infection. Mosquitoes were processed to analyze the infection of abdomen (proxy of the midgut), the viral dissemination beyond the midgut (detection of virus in head+thorax) and transmission (detection of virus in saliva). Viral populations contained in these 3 compartments were analyzed by NGS (IonTorrent). We have obtained the raw data and a list of nucleotide variations within the viral subpopulations, compared to the consensus sequence. The objective is to use these data to map mutations along the genome of the two YFV strains in order to identify mutational hotspots which can be correlated to determinants of vector competence.