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Student 10-Minute Presentation

Medical, Urban, and Veterinary Entomology

Student

Student Competition

Grad 10-min Competition: MUVE, Ecology and Vector Biology and Management

Impacts of pantothenate supplementation on Anopheles stephensi life history traits

Monday, November 11, 2024
11:30 AM – 11:42 AM MST
Location: Phoenix Convention Center, 221 B, PCC
Oral Presentation Student Competition
Nearly half of the world’s population is at risk for malaria, a disease caused by infection with Plasmodium spp. transmitted by Anopheles spp. mosquitoes. Novel transmission-blocking interventions are critical to malaria control as they can reduce the rise of drug-resistant parasites and insecticide-resistant mosquitoes. Pantothenate kinase (PanK) has been identified as a promising target for this type of intervention. Pantothenate is the precursor to coenzyme A (CoA), an essential cellular cofactor. PanK functions as the first and rate-limiting step in the CoA biosynthesis pathway. As malaria parasites must obtain pantothenate – not CoA – from the mosquito host, increasing the activity of mosquito PanK could starve the parasite of this nutrient inside the vector. In other insect species, altered levels of PanK and pantothenate have been demonstrated to alter life history traits, including survival and reproduction. Given the known effects of pantothenate on life history traits of some invertebrates and because pantothenate is acquired primarily through diet, we hypothesized that pantothenate provisioning to adult female Anopheles stephensi could alter reproduction. Adult females were provided pantothenate in water or in a blood meal, and their blood feeding behavior, oviposition, and offspring sex ratios were analyzed across multiple gonotrophic cycles. We will present data suggesting that pantothenate provisioning of females alters the germline of her offspring. This knowledge could be used to develop novel, targeted interventions to reduce mosquito reproduction, thereby reducing mosquito population levels and malaria parasite transmission.