This method of biological control could help manage populations of mosquitoes that carry deadly viruses.
The new paper details all of the proteins that are in the insect’s sperm, which helped researchers find the specific proteins that maintain the quality of the sperm while they’re inactive, as well as the ones that activate the sperm to swim.
“During mating, mosquitoes couple tail to tail, and the males transfer sperm into the female reproductive tract. It can be stored there awhile, but it still has to get from point A to point B to complete fertilization,” said study co-author Cathy Thaler, a cell biologist at the University of California, Riverside,The specialized proteins secreted during ejaculation activate the flagella and power their movement are key to completing their journey into the female mosquito’s reproductive tract.
“Without these proteins, the sperm cannot penetrate the eggs. They’ll remain immotile, and will eventually just degrade,” co-author Richard Cardullo, a University of California, Riverside biology professor,To get this very detailed information on proteins from a very small insect, the authors worked with a team of students who were able to isolate as many as 200 male mosquitoes from a larger population of bugs.
In previous studies, the team found that sperm need calcium to power their forward motion upon entering a reproductive tract. “Now we can look in the completed protein profile we’ve created, find the calcium channel proteins, and design experiments to target these channels,”
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Using the Culex pipiens sperm proteome to identify elements essential for mosquito reproductionMature sperm from Culex pipiens were isolated and analyzed by mass spectrometry to generate a mature sperm proteome dataset. In this study, we highlight subsets of proteins related to flagellar structure and sperm motility and compare the identified protein components to previous studies examining essential functions of sperm. The proteome includes 1700 unique protein IDs, including a number of uncharacterized proteins. Here we discuss those proteins that may contribute to the unusual structure of the Culex sperm flagellum, as well as potential regulators of calcium mobilization and phosphorylation pathways that regulate motility. This database will prove useful for understanding the mechanisms that activate and maintain sperm motility as well as identify potential molecular targets for mosquito population control.
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