Mosquito hunters search for Zika vectors

Zika mosquito vectors: the jury is still out

After a 40-year hiatus, the International Congress of Entomology (ICE 2016) convened in Orlando, Florida (September 25-30, 2016). One of the symposia at ICE 2016, the Zika Symposium, covered multiple aspects of the Zika epidemic, including epidemiology, sexual transmission, genetic tools for reducing transmission, and particularly vector competence. While there was a consensus among participant...

Transfected Mosquito Vectors

Improvised microinjection technique for mosquito vectors

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES Bio-manipulation technique is of primary importance during the development of transgenic mosquitoes. The study describes the variable factors that influence the viability of medically important mosquito vectors during microinjection. METHODS Three mosquito vectors belonging to the genus Aedes, Anopheles and Culex were microinjected at different developmental stages of ...

Variation in Aedes aegypti Mosquito Competence for Zika Virus Transmission

To test whether Zika virus has adapted for more efficient transmission by Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, leading to recent urban outbreaks, we fed mosquitoes from Brazil, the Dominican Republic, and the United States artificial blood meals containing 1 of 3 Zika virus strains (Senegal, Cambodia, Mexico) and monitored infection, dissemination, and virus in saliva. Contrary to our hypothesis, Cambodia...

Lessons learned on Zika virus vectors

Today, a wide belt of the Earth is receptive or vulnerable to epidemics of mosquito-borne diseases, not only in the intertropical zone in the American, African, and Asian continents but also in some European and Pacific regions. Billions of (usually low-income) people who are immunologically naïve to potentially emergent or re-emergent arboviruses live in some of these areas. The most recent ex...