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Student 10-Minute Presentation

Physiology, Biochemistry, and Toxicology

Student

Student Competition

Grad 10-min Competition: PBT, Physiology

Cardiac extracellular matrix components, pericardin and lonely heart, guide the aggregation of hemocytes to the heart of mosquitoes

Monday, November 11, 2024
8:12 AM – 8:24 AM MST
Location: Phoenix Convention Center, 125 AB, PCC
Oral Presentation Student Competition
The immune and circulatory systems of mosquitoes are functionally integrated. In response to an infection, the primary immune cells of the mosquito, the hemocytes, aggregate around the ostia (valves) of the heart—these hemocyte are known as periostial hemocytes. Periostial hemocytes phagocytose pathogens on the surface of the heart, but the underlying molecular mechanism behind their infection-induced migration to the heart is not well understood. In this study, we investigated whether two cardiac extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins, Pericardin (Prc) and Lonely heart (Loh), regulate periostial hemocyte aggregation in the African malaria mosquito, Anopheles gambiae. RNAi knockdown of Prc and Loh decreased the number of periostial hemocytes following an infection, but knockdown did not change the proportional distribution of periostial hemocytes throughout the abdomen, the amount of melanin deposited at the periostial region, or the mosquito’s ability to control an infection. Altogether, we demonstrate that the cardiac ECM regulates periostial hemocyte aggregation, but that neither Prc nor Loh impacts the effectiveness of the mosquito’s immune response to a bacterial infection.