Anopheles gambiae mosquitoWIKIMEDIA, JAMES D. GATHANYFor a female Anopheles gambiae mosquito to develop and lay eggs, she must do two things: eat a blood meal, and mate. The latter, it turns out, can trigger egg development thanks to a steroid hormone passed from male to female in the gelatinous mating plug that he transfers at the end of copulation.
In a paper published today (October 29) in PLOS Biology, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Perugia in Italy detail the molecular pathway by which this hormone interacts with the female reproductive tract, identifying a receptor and an egg-development-triggering protein that mediate the male’s manipulation of the female’s physiology.
“[T]he paper provides insights into the complex biological cocktail that the male [mosquito] synthesizes to control the reproduction of the female he mates with,” mosquito physiologist Marc Klowden, a professor emeritus at the University of Idaho who was not involved in the research, told The Scientist in an e-mail. “It revolutionizes our understanding of the role of the mating plug and the components of the seminal fluid, which used to ...
