Biology subjects

Rosas-Villegas, A.

Publications and source records attributed to Rosas-Villegas, A..

4 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Dengue virus infection in Aedes aegypti mosquito brains elicits minimal transcriptional response

Billions of people each year are at risk from infection by dengue, Zika, yellow fever, and chikungunya viruses, which are transmitted by female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Mosquitoes themselves are infected by these arboviruses, but how the mosquito nervous system responds to arboviral infection is unknown. We combined whole-mount immunofluorescence with single-head bulk RNA-sequencing to characterize dengue virus (DENV) infection in the brain of Aedes aegypti. DENV productively infects brain cells in a bimodal pattern: individual brains showed either sparse or widespread infection, with no intermediate phenotypes. An infectious blood meal altered thousands of genes, including 64 immunity genes, at 7 days post-feeding (DPF), yet active viral replication in the head did not increase the transcriptional response. Heads with and without detectable DENV showed minimal transcriptional differences, with no induction of canonical immune effectors. Despite productive infection, the mosquito brain tolerates DENV replication with minimal transcriptional response.

microbiology↗

bioRxiv2025

Mosquito Cell Atlas: A single-nucleus transcriptomic atlas of the adult Aedes aegypti mosquito

The female Aedes aegypti mosquitos remarkable ability to hunt humans and transmit pathogens relies on her unique biology. Here, we present the Aedes aegypti Mosquito Cell Atlas, a comprehensive single-nucleus RNA sequencing dataset of more than 367,000 nuclei from 19 dissected tissues of adult female and male Aedes aegypti, providing cellular-level resolution of mosquito biology. We identify novel cell types and expand our understanding of sensory neuron organization of chemoreceptors to all sensory tissues. Our analysis uncovers male-specific cells and sexually dimorphic gene expression in the antenna and brain. In female mosquitoes, we find that glial cells in the brain, rather than neurons, undergo the most extensive transcriptional changes following blood feeding. Our findings provide insights into the cellular basis of mosquito behavior and sexual dimorphism. The Aedes aegypti Mosquito Cell Atlas resource enables systematic investigation of cell type-specific expression across all mosquito tissues.

genomics↗

bioRxiv2021

A persistent behavioral state enables sustained predation of humans by mosquitoes

Predatory animals pursue prey in a noisy sensory landscape, deciding when to continue or abandon their chase. The mosquito Aedes aegypti is a micropredator that first detects humans at a distance through sensory cues such as carbon dioxide. As a mosquito nears its target it senses more proximal cues such as body heat that guides it to a meal of blood. How long the search for blood continues after initial detection of a human is not known. Here we show that a 5-second optogenetic pulse of fictive carbon dioxide induced a persistent behavioral state in female mosquitoes that lasted for more than 10 minutes. This state is highly specific to females searching for a blood meal and was not induced in recently blood-fed females or in males, who do not feed on blood. In males that lack the gene fruitless, which controls persistent social behaviors in other insects, fictive carbon dioxide induced a long-lasting behavior response resembling the predatory state of females. Finally, we show that the persistent state triggered by detection of fictive carbon dioxide enabled females to engorge on a blood meal mimic offered up to 14 minutes after the initial 5-second stimulus. Our results demonstrate that a persistent internal state allows female mosquitoes to integrate multiple human sensory cues over long timescales, an ability that is key to their success as an apex micropredator of humans.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2020

Enteric viruses evoke broad host immune responses resembling bacterial microbiome

Contributions of the viral component of the microbiome, the virome, to the development of innate and adaptive immunity are largely unknown. Here, we systematically defined the host response in mice to a panel of eukaryotic enteric viruses representing six different families. Most of these viruses asymptomatically infected the mice, the magnitude and duration of which was dependent on the microbiota. Flow cytometric and transcriptional profiling of mice mono-associated with these viruses unveiled general adaptations by the host, such as lymphocyte differentiation and IL-22 signatures in the intestine as well as numerous viral strain-specific responses that persist. Comparison with a dataset derived from analogous bacterial mono-association mice identified bacterial species that evoke an immune response comparable to the viruses we examined. These results expand an understanding of the immune space occupied by the enteric virome and underscore the importance of viral exposure events.

microbiology↗