Mosquito cellular immunity at single-cell resolution
Gianmarco Raddi, Ana Beatriz F. Barletta, Mirjana Efremova, José L. Ramírez, Rafael Cantera, Sarah A. Teichmann, Carolina Barillas‐Mury, Oliver Billker
Abstract
Teasing apart the mosquito immune system Hemocytes are key immune cells of insects, playing a major role in how vector species transmit disease. Raddi et al. collected and sequenced the RNA of more than 8000 individual hemocytes from the disease-carrying mosquitoes Anopheles gambiae and Aedes aegypti . These data were then analyzed to determine hemocyte differentiation lineages and population changes in response to noninfected and Plasmodium -infected blood meals. From these data, the researchers identified a new hemocyte type, the megacyte, defined by the transcription of specific marker genes. Gene-silencing experiments implied that the megacyte functions in hemocyte differentiation during immune priming and thus may be involved in the immune response in mosquitoes. Science , this issue p. 1128