Blood serum and BSA, but neither red blood cells nor hemoglobin can support vitellogenesis and egg production in the dengue vector Aedes aegypti
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Entomology
- Keywords
- artificial blood meal, Aedes aegypti, vitellogenesis, egg development, mosquito culture, mass rearing
- Copyright
- © 2014 Gonzales et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2014. Blood serum and BSA, but neither red blood cells nor hemoglobin can support vitellogenesis and egg production in the dengue vector Aedes aegypti. PeerJ PrePrints 2:e682v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.682v1
Abstract
Aedes aegypti is the major vector of dengue, yellow fever and chikungunya viruses that put millions of people in endemic countries at risk. Mass rearing of this mosquito is crucial for strategies that use modified insects to reduce vector populations and transmission of pathogens, such as sterile insect technique or population replacement. A major problem for vector mosquito mass rearing is the requirement of vertebrate blood for egg production since it poses significant costs as well as potential health hazards. Also regulations for human and animal use as blood source can pose a significant obstacle. A completely artificial diet that supports egg production in vector mosquitoes can solve this problem. In this study, we compared different blood fractions as dietary protein sources for mosquito egg production. We also tested artificial diets made from commercially available blood proteins (bovine serum albumin (BSA) and hemoglobin). We found that Ae. aegypti performed vitellogenesis and produced eggs when given whole bovine blood, serum, or an artificial diet containing BSA. Conversely, egg production was impaired after feeding of the red blood cell fraction or an artificial diet containing only hemoglobin. Our results indicate that serum proteins, not hemoglobin, may replace vertebrate blood in artificial diets for mass mosquito rearing.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.
Supplemental Information
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