Blood meal identification in the cryptic species Anopheles gambiae and Anopheles coluzzii using MALDI-TOF MS.

Fatalmoudou Tandina,Philippe Parola,Bernard Davoust,Ogobara K Doumbo,Maureen Laroche

doi:10.1051/parasite/2018041

Abstract

Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) has recently emerged in entomology as a technique to identify arthropods and their blood meal source. In this study, female Anopheles gambiae were fed on five host blood sources: ocelot (Leopardus pardalis), binturong (Arctictis binturong), springbok (Antidorcas marsupialis), jaguar (Panthera onca) and Hamadryas baboon (Papio hamadryas), while Anopheles coluzzii were fed on three hosts: dromedary (Camelus dromedarius), Barbary sheep (Ammotragus lervia) and pig (Sus scrofa). We obtained the MS spectra from 240 engorged mosquito abdomens and selected high quality ones from 72 mosquito abdomens to upgrade our home-made database. We excluded from the analysis any spectra of low quality (n = 80), and the remaining 88 specimens were subjected to a blind test analysis against the home-made database. We obtained 100% correct identification of the blood meal source for the specimens collected, 1, 12 and 24 h post-feeding, whereas for the specimens collected 36 h post-feeding, the correct identification rate decreased dramatically. We confirm here that MALDI-TOF MS can be used to identify the blood meal origin of freshly engorged mosquitoes, which opens new perspectives for further studies, including the impact of the mosquito species on blood meal identification.

Highlights

The analysis and identification of mosquito blood meals is essential to the study of vector bite behavior
In preliminary reports, MALDI-TOF MS has appeared as a promising tool to identify mosquito blood meals, using mosquitoes experimentally engorged in the lab, as well as using engorged mosquito abdomens crushed on Whatman filter papers (WFPs) collected during entomological field surveys [16,17,18, 23]
Among the 240 spectra, 72 spectra of the highest quality were used to upgrade the home-made database. This database previously contained reference spectra for several arthropods, including reference spectra derived from the legs of 50 mosquito species, as well as reference spectra of Anopheles gambiae abdomens engorged on 17 different hosts (Table S1)

Summary

Introduction

The analysis and identification of mosquito blood meals is essential to the study of vector bite behavior (anthropophilic or zoophilic). The detection of each molecule will generate an individual peak, providing an overall spectrum which will be highly specific to the sample [22] In recent years, this process has revolutionized clinical microbiology [21]. In preliminary reports, MALDI-TOF MS has appeared as a promising tool to identify mosquito blood meals, using mosquitoes experimentally engorged in the lab, as well as using engorged mosquito abdomens crushed on Whatman filter papers (WFPs) collected during entomological field surveys [16,17,18, 23]. Other recent studies have used a tandem mass spectrometry approach to identify tick and triatomine blood meals [6, 7, 10, 19] by the trypsin digestion of the samples [6, 7, 10, 11, 19]

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