Authors

Discussion

Use of insecticides in controlling malaria vectors will remain the cornerstone of control measures for the foreseeable future and the mechanisms of insecticide resistance continue to be important areas of study. Pyrethroid resistance is associated with several resistance mechanisms including metabolic resistance. This occurs through upregulation of one or more relevant genes but may also occur by gene duplication. CYP P450 gene products, associated with detoxification of chemicals, are known to confer resistance to pyrethroid insecticides. An. funestus putative ortholog sequences to duplicated genes CYP6P9 (CYP6P9a and CYP6P9b) and CYP6P4 (CYP6P4a and CYP6P4b) from VectorBase were aligned in SeaView v 3.2 using the MUSCLE algorithm and compared across a range of Anopheline species. If in a particular species an ortholog existed but was not annotated, to find orthologous exons a BLASTP search was performed against An. funestus and An. gambiae reference genomes on VectorBase. We found apparent novel duplications of these genes in An. minimus, an important vector of malaria in Southeast Asia. Such duplications have been described as conferring pyrethroid resistance in both An. funestus and An. gambiae.