Chemo-reception in mosquitoes

Chemo reception in mosquitoes (currently funded by 5 year NIH grant-PI Walter Leal)

Work is ongoing with Professor Leal (Department Entomology and Nematology, UC Davis- ) as the PI who is an expert in chemo reception to tease apart the mechanisms (genetic and biochemicals) of chemo receptive pathways that mosquitoes have evolved to detect hosts for blood meal engorgement and to select sites to lay eggs in several mosquito disease vectors. Noteworthy accomplishments include a comparative examination of Odorant binding proteins in the major malaria vector Anopheles funestus Xu et al. 2010), development of an effective oviposition attractant for the West Nile virus vector Culex quinquefasciatus (Leal et al. 2008) and development of methods for chemo reception studies (Pelletier et al. 2010).   

 Xu, W., Cornel, A.J, Leal, W. S. Odorant binding proteins of the malaria vector Anopheles funestus sensu stricto. PLOS One 5: (10): e15403. doi:101371/journal.pone.0015403. 2010

 Leal, W. S., Barbosa, R.M.R., Xu, W., Ishida, Y., Syad, Z., Chen, A. M., Morgan, T.I., Cornel, A. J., Furtado, A. Reverse and conventional chemical ecology approaches for the development of oviposition attractants for Culex mosquitoes. PLoS One, 3(8) :e3045.2008.

Pelletier, J., Guidolin, A., Syed, Z., Cornel, A. J., Leal, W.S. Knockdown of a mosquito odorant-binding protein involved in the sensitive detection of oviposition attractants. J. Chem. Ecol.  36:245-248, 2010.