Impact of environmental change on mosquito immunity: implications for malaria transmission control

The mosquito innate immunity is a major regulator of malaria transmission as it fights the malaria parasite. In nature, mosquitoes and parasites are exposed to environmental factors that shape their physiology; however, little is known about how they influence the Anopheles innate immunity, with repercussions for malaria transmission. This is of utmost relevance as climate change is already affecting the global malaria map. Traditional studies on Anopheles-Plasmodium interactions are performed under fixed laboratorial settings not reflecting natural environmental fluctuation. Likewise, the identification of mosquito’s genes for the development of malaria control tools and the evaluation of transmission-blocking vaccines have been performed under static laboratory conditions that do not represent daily variation occurring in nature, nor future environmental variation with climate change. The efficacy of these methods for malaria control in present and future climatic scenarios is therefore unknown. By incorporating ecological realism, our interdisciplinary study will unravel how natural environmental variations and climate change influence Anopheles innate immunity to Plasmodium and the efficacy of malaria transmission-blocking vaccines. Novel genetic targets identified in this project are likely candidates for the engineering of fit-for-purpose transgenic vectors for malaria transmission reduction in climate change-affected regions.