Dengue is a viral infection caused by the dengue virus (DENV), an arbovirus responsible for nearly 400 million infections annually worldwide. As with many arboviral diseases, dengue is often asymptomatic; however, some patients may develop clinical manifestations such as fever, vomiting, or skin rashes. In severe cases, dengue can progress to a hemorrhagic form, which may be fatal.
The virus is primarily transmitted by mosquitoes of the Aedes genus, particularly Aedes aegypti. To date, no specific antiviral treatment exists for dengue. Despite the development of a few vaccines with limited efficacy, vector control (VC)—aimed at reducing mosquito populations, mainly through the use of insecticides—remains the most effective preventive strategy.
A novel approach to vector control involves the use of Wolbachia, an endosymbiotic bacterium that reduces the vector competence of infected mosquitoes. However, the potential effects of insecticide exposure on this Wolbachia-based strategy remain poorly understood.
In this study, we experimentally generated five Aedes aegypti populations differing in their insecticide resistance status and Wolbachia infection. Some mosquitoes were subjected to insecticide selection, while others were treated with tetracycline to eliminate Wolbachia from one of the populations. The accompanying schematic summarizes the experimental design.
Our objective is to perform 16S rRNA gene sequencing and subsequent bioinformatic analyses on these five populations to characterize and compare their bacterial microbiota. This work aims to determine whether the experimental design influenced the mosquito microbiome composition and to assess the relative abundance of Wolbachia within infected populations.
This project uses the same Aedes aegypti populations as those previously submitted to Biomics under project references B19376-1 and B19376-2.
