TheAnopheles gambiaeGenome

Abstract

Anopheles gambiae is the most important vector of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, where most of the world’s human malaria cases and deaths occur each year. Genetically, A. gambiae sensu stricto is a very polymorphic taxon. A. gambiae is clearly a species with a high degree of genetic population structure, particularly in west and central Africa. A. gambiae has three pairs of chromosomes, an X and Y sex-determining pair and two autosomes, chromosomes 2 and 3. The shotgun sequences from Celera and Genoscope were assembled with the Celera assembler into 8,987 scaffolds (ordered and oriented sets of contigs with gaps) that constitute the assembled genome. The A. gambiae genome is currently undergoing a major update of the assembly, which will then be followed by an entirely new annotation. A major milestone for the VectorBase developers will be the completion of the first draft of the Aedes aegypti genome and close comparison between the Anopheles and Aedes genomes. Postgenome studies using large-scale data sets involving expressed sequence tags (ESTs), microarray expression analysis, single nucleotide polymorphisms, and proteomics data, in addition to third-party annotations, are essential to provide information on the annotation of the genome and to pinpoint unique and fundamental aspects of mosquito biology that could be exploited for control. Insecticides are an essential component to most malaria control programs. Our future challenge will be to determine the function of gene products and to establish precisely how they interact in time and space to affect vector biology and disease transmission.