Assistant Professor University of Wisconsin Madison, Wisconsin
Mosquitoes harbor microbial communities that play important roles in their growth, survival, reproduction, and ability to transmit human pathogens. Microbiome transplantation and other approaches are often used to study host-microbe interactions and identify microbial taxa and assemblages associated with health or disease. However, no such approaches have been developed to manipulate the microbiota of mosquitoes. Here, I present results that demonstrate the successful isolation and transplantation of microbiota from donor to recipient mosquitoes. Ongoing efforts to generate a comprehensive collection of whole-genome sequenced bacterial isolates from mosquitoes and the environment–and their implications as long-term resources of broad interest and value to scientists working on host-associated microbiomes and bacterial evolution–are further discussed. Altogether, these approaches lay the foundation for future work to facilitate standardized studies of mosquito-microbe interactions, examine host-microbe interactions, and to identify effective strategies for manipulating mosquito microbiota to control mosquito populations and mosquito-borne diseases.
