Novel factors of Anopheles gambiae haemocyte immune response to Plasmodium berghei infection

Background: insect haemocytes mediate cellular immune responses (e.g.,phagocytosis) and contribute to the synthesis of humoral immune factors. in previous work,a genome-wide molecular characterization of anopheles gambiae circulating haemocytes was followed by functional gene characterization using cell-based rnai screens. assays were carried out to investigate the role of selected haemocyte-specific or enriched genes in phagocytosis of bacterial bio-particles,expression of the antimicrobial peptide cecropin1,and basal and induced expression of the mosquito complement factor lrim1 (leucine-rich repeat immune gene i). findings: here we studied the impact of a subset of genes (37 candidates) from the haemocyte-specific dsrna collection on the development of plasmodium in the mosquito by in vivo gene silencing. our screening identifies 10 novel factors with a role in the mosquito response to plasmodium. analysis of in vivo screening phenotypes reveals a significant anti-correlation between the prevalence of oocysts and melanised ookinetes. conclusions: among novel immune genes are putative pattern recognition proteins (leucine-rich repeat,fibrinogen-domain and r-type lectins),immune modulation and signalling proteins (lps-induced tumor necrosis factor alpha factor,litaf and clip proteases),and components of extracellular matrix such as laminin and collagen. additional identified proteins such as the storage protein hexamerin and vesicular-type atpase (v-atpase) are associated for the first time with the mosquito response against plasmodium. © 2016 lombardo and christophides.