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Natural Malaria Infection in Anopheles gambiae Is Regulated by a Single Genomic Control Region
Michelle M. Riehle,1*Kyriacos Markianos,2*Oumou Niaré,3Jiannong Xu,1Jun Li,1Abdoulaye M. Touré,3Belco Podiougou,3Frederick Oduol,1Sory Diawara,3Mouctar Diallo,3Boubacar Coulibaly,3Ahmed Ouatara,3Leonid Kruglyak,4Sékou F. Traoré,3Kenneth D. Vernick1
We surveyed an Anopheles gambiae population in a West Africanmalaria transmission zone for naturally occurring genetic locithat control mosquito infection with the human malaria parasite,Plasmodium falciparum. The strongest Plasmodium resistance locicluster in a small region of chromosome 2L and each locus explainsat least 89% of parasite-free mosquitoes in independent pedigrees.Together, the clustered loci form a genomic Plasmodium-resistanceisland that explains most of the genetic variation for malariaparasite infection of mosquitoes in nature. Among the candidategenes in this chromosome region, RNA interference knockdownassays confirm a role in Plasmodium resistance for AnophelesPlasmodium-responsive leucine-rich repeat 1 (APL1), encodinga leucine-rich repeat protein that is similar to molecules involvedin natural pathogen resistance mechanisms in plants and mammals.
1 Center for Microbial and Plant Genomics and Department of Microbiology, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108, USA. 2 Program in Computational Biology, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, 1100 Fairview Avenue North, M2-B876, Seattle, WA 98109, USA. 3 Département d'Epidémiologie des Affectations Parasitaires, Université de Bamako, Boîte Postale 1805, Bamako, Mali. 4 Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Carl Icahn Laboratory, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
* These authors contributed equally to this work.
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: kvernick{at}umn.edu
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