- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Spotlighted are parasitologist and entomologist Shirley Luckhart, professor in the UC Davis School of Medicine's Department of Medical Microbiology and immunology and the Department of Entomology and Nematology; medical entomologist Gregory Lanzaro, professor, Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology (PMI), UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, and an associate of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology; chemical ecologist Walter Leal, professor in the UC Davis Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and former chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology; virologist Lark Coffey of PMI; and UC Davis post-doctoral researcher Young-Moo Choo of the Leal's lab who discovered a receptor by dissecting mosquitoes' mouthparts and genetically testing them.
The KQED piece, drawing widespread interest, is the work of Gabriela Quirós, coordinator producer of Deep Look, KQED Science.
Luckhart said that the mosquitoes detect body heat and substances called volatile fatty acids. “The volatile fatty acids given off by our skin are quite different," Luckhart told Quirós. "They reflect differences between men and women, even what we've eaten. Those cues are different from person to person. There's probably not one or two. It's the blend that's more or less attractive.”
“Mosquitoes don't find the blood vessel randomly," Leal said, pointing out that the receptors respond to chemicals in the blood.
The receptor that the Leal lab discovered is called 4EP, and may lead to drug companies developing new mosquito repellents. “First they'd need to find a repellent against the receptors," Choo told Quirós. "Then they'd treat people's skin with it. When the mosquito tried to penetrate the skin, it would taste or smell something repulsive and fly away.”
Lanzaro said that the latest malaria statistics--more than 300 million people contracted malaria in 2015, and some 635,000 died--are "probably an underestimate."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
“It's ‘super' with respect to its ability to survive exposure to the insecticides on treated bed nets,” said medical entomologist Gregory Lanzaro of the University of California, Davis, who led the research team.
The research, published in “The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “provides convincing evidence indicating that a man-made change in the environment--the introduction of insecticides--has altered the evolutionary relationship between two species, in this case a breakdown in the reproductive isolation that separates them,” said Lanzaro, director of the Vector Genetics Laboratory and professor in the Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology in the School of Veterinary Medicine.
“What we provide in this new paper is an example of one unusual mechanism that has promoted the rapid evolution of insecticide resistance in one of the major malaria mosquito species.”
The insecticide resistance came as no surprise. “Growing resistance has been observed for some time,” Lanzaro said. “Recently it has reached a level at some localities in Africa where it is resulting in the failure of the nets to provide meaningful control, and it is my opinion that this will increase.”
Lanzaro, who has researched mosquitoes for 36 years, and in Mali since 1991, credits insecticide-treated nets with “saving many thousands, probably tens of thousands of lives in Mali.” The World Health Organization's World Malaria Report indicates that deaths from malaria worldwide have decreased by 47 percent since 2000. Much of that is attributed to the insecticide-treated bed nets.
The paper is titled “Adaptive Introgression in an African Malaria Mosquito Coincident with the Increase Usage of Insecticide-Treated Bed Nets.” First author is Laura Norris, then a postdoctoral scholar in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology who was supported by a National Institutes of Health T32 training grant awarded to Lanzaro. Norris has since accepted a position with the President's Malaria Initiative in Washington, D.C.
In addition to Lanzaro, co-authors include medical entomologist Anthony Cornel, Department of Entomology and Nematology and Vector Genetics Lab; Yoosook Lee and Travis Collier of the Vector Genetics Lab and the Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology; and Abdrahamane Fofana of the Malaria Research and Training Center at the University of Bamako, Mali. Three grants from the National Institutes of Health funded the research.
Lanzaro has researched mosquitoes in Mali for 24 years with “blood brother” Anthony Cornel, associate professor in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology who is headquartered at the UC Kearney Agriculture and Research Center, Parlier. Both are graduate student advisors in the department, training medical entomologists of tomorrow.
Related Links:
Vector Genetics Lab
Anthony Cornel: Mosquito Man
Time Magazine
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Sanford, lead author of "Plasmodium falciparum Infection Rates for Some Anopheles spp. from Guinea-Bissau, West Africa,” completed the research at UC Davis while she was funded by a National Institutes of Health T-32 training grant.
Sanford worked closely with medical entomologists Anthony Cornel of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology; and Gregory Lanzaro and Yoosook Lee of the Vector Genetics Laboratory, Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, School of Veterinary Medicine. Cornel is based at the Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center, Parlier, and also works in the Vector Genetics Lab.
"Malaria is among the leading causes of childhood mortality in Guinea-Bissau, comprising 18% of mortality of children less than five years of age as of 2010 (WHO, 2010). However, the human malaria incidence rate in Guinea Bissau varies considerably from year to year with a general decrease in recent years to about 3 children (Ursing et al., 2014). Plasmodium falciparum predominates, causing 98% cases, followed by a few cases of Plasmodium malariae and Plasmodium ovale. Mixed infections of P. malariae, and to a lesser extent P. ovale, have been recorded but appear to be rare and highly variable in both Guinea-Bissau (Snounou et al., 1993) and neighboring Senegal (Fontenille et al., 1997a; Fontenille et al., 1997b).
"Limited research has been conducted on the vectors and malaria parasite infection rates in Guinea-Bissau populations of Anopheles species in general and there is no data on comparative infection rates between A. gambiae and A. coluzzii and members of the A. gambiae complex. Variability is also high among the Anopheles spp. implicated as vectors in this region of West Africa in terms of both their temporal population dynamics as well as species composition among study sites (Carnevale et al., 2010; Fontenille et al., 1997a; Jaenson et al., 1994; Snounou et al., 1993).
"Here we present much needed data on P. falciparum infection of Anopheles spp. specimens collected from inside and around associated human habitations at eight sites in Guinea-Bissau."
Other co-authors, in addition to Cornel, Lanzaro and Lee are Catelyn Nieman, Allison Weakley and Sarah Han, all of the UC Davis Vector Genetics Lab; and Joao Dinis and Amabelia Rodrigues, National Institute of Public Health, Bissau, Guinea-Bissau.,
Sanford now works as a forensic entomologist at the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences, Texas Medical Center, Houston. While at UC Davis, she helped organize the World Malaria World Day observances.
Sanford received her bachelor of science degree in biology, with a minor in entomology, from UC Riverside in 2000; her master's degree in entomology from UC Riverside in 2003 and her doctorate in entomology from Texas A&M University in 2010. Her dissertation: “Observations on the Associative Learning Capabilities of Adult Culex quinquefasciatus Say and Other Mosquitoes.”
Active in the Entomological Society of America (ESA), Sanford won the John Henry Comstock Award, Southwestern Branch of ESA, in 2009. She received the 2010 Outstanding Achievement in Doctoral Research Award from Texas A&M in 2010, and a U.S. Fulbright Fellowship to Thailand in 2007.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It promises to be a day of innovation, knowledge-sharing and collaboration, announced Kay Monroe of Zagaya, the event host.
Among the UC Davis researchers participating will be Gregory Lanzaro, professor, and Yoosook Lee, assistant researcher in the Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology (PMI) in the School of Veterinary Medicine and Shirley Luckhart, professor in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, UC Davis School of Medicine. Lanzaro and Luckhart are graduate student advisors in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
Lanzaro's Soundbite presentation,"Malaria in the Americas: A New Research Initiative for the UC Davis Vector Genetics Lab," will key in on the challenges of malaria control in Brazil. Lee's Soundbite presentation will be on a new diagnostic tool for malaria mosquito research. Luckhart is scheduled for both a Soundbite and poster.
Two of the UC Davis presenters, Laura Norris and Bradley Main, are National Institutes of Health T32 postdoctoral fellows. They will cover the topic of malaria vector evolution in the face of insecticide pressure from bed net campaign.
The schedule of events will be presented the day of the symposium.
The list of the other UC Davis presenters, as announced by Monroe:
Nazzy Pakpour, Soundbite; and Elizabeth Glennon, Kristen Lokken, Jason Maloney, Jose Pietri, Rashaun Potts and Lattha Souvannaseng, Bo Wang, poster.
Keynote speakers are:
- Tim Wells, chief scientific officer, Medicines for Malaria Venture, Geneva, Switzerland, who will share the latest efforts to develop new drugs aimed at wiping out malaria.
Title: The Pipeline of Medicines to Support Malaria Control and Elimination
View abstract
Joseph DeRisi, professor and vice chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, UC San Francisco, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, who will talk about work in his lab. - Title: "A View from the Trenches – Anti-malarial Drug Development"
View abstract - Regina Rabinovich, ExxonMobil Malaria Scholar in Residence at the Harvard School of Public Health, who will examine the future of malaria eradication efforts, past the 2015 UN Millennium Development goals.
Title: "Beyond the Millennium Development Goals Horizon – What Will Help Drive Success Post-2015?"
View abstract
This year Zagaya has added to the symposium, "The Malaria Artwork Showcase," designed to display artistic representations of malaria, from the molecular to the global scale. The Lanzaro lab will be among those participating in the showcase.
Officials at Zagaya (which means "spear") say this is a critical time for malaria research professionals to come together, as it's one year away from the 2015 UN Millennium Development goal of halting and reversing the growth of malaria incidence. The symposium provides the forum for researchers, implementers, advocates and students to "inspire and catalyze change for the greater good."
Registration is open and ongoing until the day of the event. General registration is $50, and students, $25. A portion of the registration fee--$10--will go toward purchasing bed nets via the United Nation's Nothing but Nets program, a global, grassroots campaign to save lives by preventing malaria.
"Every 45 seconds a child in Africa dies from malaria, a disease spread by a single mosquito bite," according to the From Nothing But Nets website. "There are more than 200 million cases of malaria each year, and nearly 1 million of those infected die from the disease — most of them children under the age of five." Ten dollars can fund a life-saving, insecticide-treated bed net to protect a family in Africa. The nets are considered one of the most cost-effective tools to prevent the spread of malaria. Bed nets have been shown to reduce malaria transmissions by 90 percent in areas with high coverage rates.
For question about the symposium, email Monroe. Anyone interested in volunteering at the symposium should email volunteer coordinator, Gladys De Leon.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The T32 Retreat, for Training in Vector Biology, will take place from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Room 1105 of the Veterinary Medicine Research Facility 3B, located at 1089 Veterinary Medicine Drive.
Peter Billingsley of Sanaria, Inc., a biotechnology company dedicated to the production of a vaccine protective against malaria caused by the pathogen Plasmodium falciparum, will be the keynote speaker, addressing the crowd from 10:45 to 11:45 a.m.
Also scheduled to give a keynote presentation was B. Joseph Hinnebusch of the National Institute of Health’s Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, but due to the government shutdown, his presentation is cancelled. Filling in for him from 1 to 2 p.m. will be professor Greg Lanzaro of the Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, School of Veterinary Medicine, director of the T32 training grant, and associate director Shirley Luckhart, professor in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, School of Medicine.
This year's event is sponsored by the School of Veterinary Medicine, School of Medicine, and a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Training Grant in Vector Biology at UC Davis, directed by two UC Davis malaria researchers.
There is no cost for the retreat, but reservations must be made by Oct. 5 with researcher Yoosook Lee at yoosook.lee@gmail.com.
The schedule, as of Friday, Oct. 4:
8:30 to 9:30 a.m.: Coffee
9 to 9:10 a.m.: Welcome by Greg Lanzaro, director of T32 Grant
Vector Biology Research at UC Davis
9:10 to 9:25: Research at the School of Medicine, speaker Shirley Luckhart, associate director of T32 grant
9:25 to 9:40 a.m.: Research at the Center for Vectorborne Diseases (CVEC), speaker CVEC director and research entomologist William Reisen
9:40 to 9:55 a.m.: Research at the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, speaker entomologist Anthony Cornel
9:55 to 10:10 a.m.: Research at the UC Davis Veterinary Genetics Laboratory, speaker entomologist Gregory Lanzaro
10:10 to 10:20: Remarks by Dori Borjesson, chair of UC Davis Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, School of Veterinary Medicine
10:20 to 10:45: Coffee break
Keynote Presentation 1
10:45 to 11:45: Peter Billingsley of Sanaria, Inc.
Lunch
Keynote Presentation 2
1 to 2 p.m.: Professor Greg Lanzaro of the Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, School of Veterinary Medicine, director of the T32 training grant, and associate director Shirley Luckhart, professor in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, School of Medicine. (Due to the government shutdown, the initially scheduled presentation by B. Joseph Hinnebusch of the National Institute of Health’s Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is cancelled.)
Trainee Presentations
2 to 2:15 p.m.: Laura Norris (studies with Anthony Cornel): "Speciation Island Introgression between Anopheles gambiae forms driven by Insecticide Pressure."
2:15 to 2:30: Bradley Main (studies with Greg Lanzaro): "Ecological Genomics Among Anopheles gambiae Populations in Mali"
2:30 to 2:45 p.m.: Rebecca Ann Elsner (studies with Nicole Baumgarth): "Suppression of B Cell Responses to the Lyme disease agent Borrella burgdoreci"
3:10 to 3:25 p.m. Lattha Souvannaseng (studies with Shirley Luckhart): "Ubiquity of Population-Specific Mutations in the Immune Signaling Genes Among Chromosomal Forms of Anopheles gambiae"
3:25 to 3:40: Elizabeth Glennon (studies with Shirley Luckhart): "The Role of Abscisic Acid in the Mosquito Immune Response to Plasmodium falciparum"
3:40: Closing Remarks, Greg Lanzaro
For more information on the training grant or research, contact Lanzaro at gclanzaro@ucdavis.edu or Luckhart at sluckhart@ucdavis.edu.