Journal of Heredity Advance Access originally published online on March 11, 2008
Journal of Heredity 2008 99(3):275-282; doi:10.1093/jhered/esn004
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Fitness of Transgenic Anopheles stephensi Mosquitoes Expressing the SM1 Peptide under the Control of a Vitellogenin Promoter
From the Johns Hopkins University, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology and Malaria Research Institute, 615 North Wolfe Street, Baltimore MD 21205 (Li, Marrelli, Yan, and Jacobs-Lorena). Chaoyang Li is now at the Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH; Mauro T. Marrelli is at the Epidemiology Department, Faculdade de Saúde Pública, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, SP, Brazil; and Guiyun Yan is now at the Program in Public Health, College of Health Sciences University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-4050
Address correspondence to M. Jacobs-Lorena at the address above, or e-mail: mlorena{at}jhsph.edu.
Three transgenic Anopheles stephensi lines were established that strongly inhibit transmission of the mouse malaria parasite Plasmodium berghei. Fitness of the transgenic mosquitoes was assessed based on life table analysis and competition experiments between transgenic and wild-type mosquitoes. Life table analysis indicated low fitness load for the 2 single-insertion transgenic mosquito lines VD35 and VD26 and no load for the double-insertion transgenic mosquito line VD9. However, in cage experiments, where each of the 3 homozygous transgenic mosquitoes was mixed with nontransgenic mosquitoes, transgene frequency of all 3 lines decreased with time. Further experiments suggested that reduction of transgene frequency is a consequence of reduced mating success, reduced reproductive capacity, and/or insertional mutagenesis, rather than expression of the transgene itself. Thus, for transgenic mosquitoes released in the field to be effective in reducing malaria transmission, a driving mechanism will be required.
* Chaoyang Li and Mauro T. Marrelli contributed equally to this work.
Corresponding Editor: Ron Woodruff
Received June 1, 2007
Accepted November 28, 2007