Infectious diseases transmitted through mosquitoes account for millions of death world wide each year. Cell death (apoptosis) is an important component of host/vector immuno-response mechanism and has been implicated in the life cycle of pathogens in mosquitoes. However the understanding of cell death regulation in mosquito was hindered greatly by the fact that major insect cell death regulators, namely the reaper/hid/grim (RHG) like lAP-antagonists identified in Drosophila, were not present in the annotated mosquito (Anopheles gambia) genome. Using a systematic bioinformatics approach, we have identified several candidates of reaper/hid/grim-like lAP-antagonist in both the Anopheles and Aedes mosquito genomes. One of them, michelob_x has been characterized as indeed an lAP-antagonist. This proposed project aims at further characterizing these lAP-antagonists and their role in mediating cell death during mosquito development as well as in response to pathogen infection. Findings generated from this study should significantly improve our understanding of immuno-response and cell death regulation in mosquitoes. It is also quite possible that some of these genes, because of their tissue-ablation activity, can be used for mosquito population control strategies. ? ? ?

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)
Type
Exploratory/Developmental Grants (R21)
Project #
5R21AI067555-02
Application #
7244016
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG1-VB-P (01))
Program Officer
Costero, Adriana
Project Start
2006-06-15
Project End
2009-05-31
Budget Start
2007-06-01
Budget End
2009-05-31
Support Year
2
Fiscal Year
2007
Total Cost
$211,921
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Florida
Department
Genetics
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
969663814
City
Gainesville
State
FL
Country
United States
Zip Code
32611
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Lin, Nianwei; Zhang, Can; Pang, John et al. (2009) By design or by chance: cell death during Drosophila embryogenesis. Apoptosis 14:935-42
Bryant, B; Zhang, Y; Zhang, C et al. (2009) A lepidopteran orthologue of reaper reveals functional conservation and evolution of IAP antagonists. Insect Mol Biol 18:341-51
Meng, Hailong; Banerjee, Arunava; Zhou, Lei (2007) BLISS 2.0: a web-based tool for predicting conserved regulatory modules in distantly-related orthologous sequences. Bioinformatics 23:3249-50