Metabolic balancing by miR-276 shapes the mosquito reproductive cycle and Plasmodium falciparum development.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 31822677.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-019-13627-y and PMC identifier 6904670.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The blood-feeding behavior of Anopheles females delivers essential nutrients for egg development and drives parasite transmission between humans. Plasmodium growth is adapted to the vector reproductive cycle, but how changes in the reproductive cycle impact parasite development remains unclear. Here, we show that the bloodmeal-induced miR-276-5p fine-tunes the expression of branched-chain amino acid transferase to terminate the reproductive cycle. Silencing of miR-276 prolongs high rates of amino acid (AA) catabolism and increases female fertility, suggesting that timely termination of AA catabolism restricts mosquito investment into reproduction. Prolongation of AA catabolism in P. falciparum-infected females also compromises the development of the transmissible sporozoite forms. Our results suggest that Plasmodium sporogony exploits the surplus mosquito resources available after reproductive investment and demonstrate the crucial role of the mosquito AA metabolism in within-vector parasite proliferation and malaria transmission.
Medical subject headings
- Anopheles
- MicroRNAs
- Plasmodium falciparum