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Fruitless mutant male mosquitoes gain attraction to human odor

The Aedes aegypti mosquito shows extreme sexual dimorphism in feeding. Only females are attracted to and obtain a blood-meal from humans, which they use to stimulate egg production. The fruitless gene is sex-specifically spliced and encodes a BTB zinc-finger transcription factor proposed to be a mas...

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Autores principales: Basrur, Nipun S, De Obaldia, Maria Elena, Morita, Takeshi, Herre, Margaret, von Heynitz, Ricarda K, Tsitohay, Yael N, Vosshall, Leslie B
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7806257/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33284111
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.63982
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author Basrur, Nipun S
De Obaldia, Maria Elena
Morita, Takeshi
Herre, Margaret
von Heynitz, Ricarda K
Tsitohay, Yael N
Vosshall, Leslie B
author_facet Basrur, Nipun S
De Obaldia, Maria Elena
Morita, Takeshi
Herre, Margaret
von Heynitz, Ricarda K
Tsitohay, Yael N
Vosshall, Leslie B
author_sort Basrur, Nipun S
collection PubMed
description The Aedes aegypti mosquito shows extreme sexual dimorphism in feeding. Only females are attracted to and obtain a blood-meal from humans, which they use to stimulate egg production. The fruitless gene is sex-specifically spliced and encodes a BTB zinc-finger transcription factor proposed to be a master regulator of male courtship and mating behavior across insects. We generated fruitless mutant mosquitoes and showed that males failed to mate, confirming the ancestral function of this gene in male sexual behavior. Remarkably, fruitless males also gain strong attraction to a live human host, a behavior that wild-type males never display, suggesting that male mosquitoes possess the central or peripheral neural circuits required to host-seek and that removing fruitless reveals this latent behavior in males. Our results highlight an unexpected repurposing of a master regulator of male-specific sexual behavior to control one module of female-specific blood-feeding behavior in a deadly vector of infectious diseases.
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spelling pubmed-78062572021-01-15 Fruitless mutant male mosquitoes gain attraction to human odor Basrur, Nipun S De Obaldia, Maria Elena Morita, Takeshi Herre, Margaret von Heynitz, Ricarda K Tsitohay, Yael N Vosshall, Leslie B eLife Genetics and Genomics The Aedes aegypti mosquito shows extreme sexual dimorphism in feeding. Only females are attracted to and obtain a blood-meal from humans, which they use to stimulate egg production. The fruitless gene is sex-specifically spliced and encodes a BTB zinc-finger transcription factor proposed to be a master regulator of male courtship and mating behavior across insects. We generated fruitless mutant mosquitoes and showed that males failed to mate, confirming the ancestral function of this gene in male sexual behavior. Remarkably, fruitless males also gain strong attraction to a live human host, a behavior that wild-type males never display, suggesting that male mosquitoes possess the central or peripheral neural circuits required to host-seek and that removing fruitless reveals this latent behavior in males. Our results highlight an unexpected repurposing of a master regulator of male-specific sexual behavior to control one module of female-specific blood-feeding behavior in a deadly vector of infectious diseases. eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2020-12-07 /pmc/articles/PMC7806257/ /pubmed/33284111 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.63982 Text en © 2020, Basrur et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Genetics and Genomics
Basrur, Nipun S
De Obaldia, Maria Elena
Morita, Takeshi
Herre, Margaret
von Heynitz, Ricarda K
Tsitohay, Yael N
Vosshall, Leslie B
Fruitless mutant male mosquitoes gain attraction to human odor
title Fruitless mutant male mosquitoes gain attraction to human odor
title_full Fruitless mutant male mosquitoes gain attraction to human odor
title_fullStr Fruitless mutant male mosquitoes gain attraction to human odor
title_full_unstemmed Fruitless mutant male mosquitoes gain attraction to human odor
title_short Fruitless mutant male mosquitoes gain attraction to human odor
title_sort fruitless mutant male mosquitoes gain attraction to human odor
topic Genetics and Genomics
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7806257/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33284111
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.63982
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