SNP discovery and molecular evolution in Anopheles gambiae, with special emphasis on innate immune system

doi:10.1186/1471-2164-9-227

BMC Genomics

Volume 9

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Cohuet A
Krishnakumar S
Simard F
Morlais I
Koutsos A
Fontenille D
Mindrinos M
Kafatos FC

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Cohuet A
Krishnakumar S
Simard F
Morlais I
Koutsos A
Fontenille D
Mindrinos M
Kafatos FC
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Research article

SNP discovery and molecular evolution in Anopheles gambiae, with special emphasis on innate immune system

Anna Cohuet¹ , Sujatha Krishnakumar² , Frédéric Simard¹^,3 , Isabelle Morlais¹^,3 , Anastasios Koutsos⁴^,5 , Didier Fontenille¹ , Michael Mindrinos² and Fotis C Kafatos⁴

¹Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, UR 016, BP 64501, 911 Avenue Agropolis, 34394 Montpellier Cedex 5, France

²Stanford Genome Technology Center, 855 California Avenue, Palo Alto CA 94304, USA

³Organisation de Coordination pour la lutte contre les Endémies en Afrique Centrale, Laboratoire de Recherche sur le Paludisme, BP 288, Yaounde, Cameroon

⁴Imperial College London, Division of Cell and Molecular Biology, Sir Alexander Fleming Building, South Kensington Campus, London, SW7 2AZ, UK

⁵BMC-series Journals, BioMed Central, Middlesex House, 34-42 Cleveland Street, London W1T 4LB, UK

author email corresponding author email

BMC Genomics 2008, 9:227doi:10.1186/1471-2164-9-227


Published:	19 May 2008

Abstract

Background

Anopheles innate immunity affects Plasmodium development and is a potential target of innovative malaria control strategies. The extent and distribution of nucleotide diversity in immunity genes might provide insights into the evolutionary forces that condition pathogen-vector interactions. The discovery of polymorphisms is an essential step towards association studies of susceptibility to infection.

Results

We sequenced coding fragments of 72 immune related genes in natural populations of Anopheles gambiae and of 37 randomly chosen genes to provide a background measure of genetic diversity across the genome. Mean nucleotide diversity (π) was 0.0092 in the A. gambiae S form, 0.0076 in the M form and 0.0064 in A. arabiensis. Within each species, no statistically significant differences in mean nucleotide diversity were detected between immune related and non immune related genes. Strong purifying selection was detected in genes of both categories, presumably reflecting strong functional constraints.

Conclusion

Our results suggest similar patterns and rates of molecular evolution in immune and non-immune genes in A. gambiae. The 3,214 Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) that we identified are the first large set of Anopheles SNPs from fresh, field-collected material and are relevant markers for future phenotype-association studies.