BioProject

The Southern house mosquito, Culex quinquefasciatus, is an anautogenous mosquito species that requires a blood meal in order to provision the eggs. More...

The Southern house mosquito, Culex quinquefasciatus, is an anautogenous mosquito species that requires a blood meal in order to provision the eggs. Following the eclosion of the adults from the pupal stage, adult female mosquitoes require a period of time for mating and development before they are competent to take a blood meal. In order to better understand the genes involved in preparing the females to take a blood meal, populations of non-blooded adult female Cx. quinquefasciatus were collected from even-aged populations and used for RNA Seq analysis. A total of seven post-eclosion time points were selected (2, 12, 24, 36, 48, 60, and 72 hours), which spanned the pre-blood feeding time period and the time period during which the females were competent for the acquisition of the blood meal. Overall, the majority of differentially-expressed genes were identified between the 2 and 12h time points with most genes reaching stable expression after 36h. This study identified the global changes in gene expression profiles over time as the females become competent to acquire the blood meal. Overall design: Time series analysis of gene expression in Cx. quinquefasciatus using RNASeq. Data were analysed using the Tophat-Cufflinks-Cuffdiff pipeline from the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Univ. Maryland College Park. Less...