Authors

G Hughes¹;  ¹ Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, UK

Discussion

The use of Wolbachia as a novel vector control strategy has been highly successful, demonstrating a significant impact on disease prevalence in field trials targeting Aedes mosquitoes. Long thought to be absent from natural populations of Anopheles mosquitoes, which are highly effective malaria vectors, Wolbachia based interventions have proven challenging. Our recent discovery of natural high density Wolbachia strains in populations of Anopheles moucheti and Anopheles demeilloni has reinvigorated efforts to create transinfections in medically relevant Anopheles mosquitoes. Here we present our work demonstrating high density maternally transmitted strains of Wolbachia in An. moucheti and An. demeilloni from sub-Saharan Africa, providing concrete evidence for resident Wolbachia strains in this genera. In addition, we report on our recent endeavours work with these novel strains of Wolbachia in the lab, thereby providing a tractable source of Wolbachia for further experiments. We discuss our findings in the context of developing novel Wolbachia-based control approaches in Anopheles to reduce the burden of malaria and our recent insights on the molecular mechanisms induced by Wolbachia to interfere with pathogens.