Abstract
Hundreds of viruses, designated as arboviruses, are transmitted by arthropod vectors in complex transmission cycles between the virus, vertebrate host, and the vector. With millions of human and animal infections per year, it is critical to improve our understanding of the interactions between the biological and environmental factors that play a critical role in pathogenesis, disease outcomes, and transmission of arboviruses. This review focuses on mosquito-borne arboviruses and discusses current knowledge of the factors and underlying mechanisms that influence infection and transmission of arboviruses and discusses critical factors and pathways that can potentially become targets for intervention and therapeutics.
Highlights
Specialty section: This article was submitted to Virology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Microbiology
This review focuses on mosquito-borne arboviruses and discusses current knowledge of the factors and underlying mechanisms that influence infection and transmission of arboviruses and discusses critical factors and pathways that can potentially become targets for intervention and therapeutics
We focus on the discoveries of interactions between arboviruses, vectors, and vertebrate hosts at the cellular and molecular levels, which changed transmission patterns and disease pathogenesis
Summary
Identification of intrinsic factors, for example immune-related genes that control the infection process of arboviruses in arthropods, has long been an important topic for arbovirus research (Sim et al, 2014). The development of different molecular biological techniques in the late 20th century provided tools, for example RNA interference (RNAi), to examine individual factors as determinants of the outcome of arbovirus infection in vivo Despite these advances and the availability of sequence data for several important species of mosquito, we still do not understand the basis of species specific susceptibility to virus infection and vector competence. In addition to the concern that the experimental approach of manipulating individual genes may not produce conclusive and biologically relevant results, there is evidence indicating that different components of a physiological response such as digestion, nutritional status, and reproductive status may be involved in both the defense mechanisms of arthropod vectors and play a critical role in the arboviral life cycle (Wikel et al, 2017) Such complexity is well exemplified by studies showing the ubiquitin proteasome pathway is involved in the arthropod immune response and release of infectious viruses. While manipulation of individual genetic products remains the only feasible approach to characterizing vector-virus interactions, the broad view on how different pathways and their interactions can influence vector competence for arboviruses is still needed for improved mechanistic understanding of the infection, dissemination, and transmission processes of arboviruses in arthropod vectors
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