Search bioRxiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/bioRxiv

bioRxiv · 10.1101/2025.04.14.648682

Vector Competence of Temperate and Tropical Mosquito Species for Babanki virus

Ban, M.·Geolier, V.·Ferquel, E.·Faye, M.·Diagne, M. M.·Ndiaye, E. H.·Fall, G.·Diallo, M.·Lavillette, D.·Choumet, V.
View original source ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

Babanki virus (BBKV), an alphavirus belonging to the Western Equine encephalitis complex, was isolated from Mansonia africana mosquitoes in 1969 but is not characterized yet. Transmitted to humans and animals through the bite of an infectious female arthropod, it is associated with febrile illness, rash, and arthritis similarly to Sindbis virus to which it is related. No specific treatment or vaccine is available. To investigate any risk of propagation, our study investigated the vector competence of several mosquito species towards BBKV. For this purpose, laboratory mosquito colonies from metropolitan France: Culex pipiens (Paris), Aedes albopictus (Nice) as well as tropical area: Aedes albopictus (Saint-Benoit, La Reunion) and Culex quinquefasciatus (Slab strain), Aedes aegypti (PAEA) were exposed to an artificial blood meal infected with BBKV molecular clone. Midguts, legs, salivary glands and saliva were collected from individual mosquitoes of different strains or species at various time points to assess the infection status, viral replication, and infectiousness. At 7 days post viral exposure, infection rates exceeded 70% in Aedes and 40% in Culex species. They remain above 50% except for Culex quinquefasciatus which decreases to 35% at 14 days post viral exposure. Using genome and protein detection, the dissemination rates are above 50% except for Aedes albopictus (Nice) at 7 days post viral exposure. Infection assays using VeroE6 cells indicated that BBKV replicative viral particles were found in the saliva of the different populations tested. Our data demonstrate that different mosquitoes species from both temperate and tropical areas are competent to transmit BBKV suggesting an emergence risk that could trigger an outbreak in humans. Author SummaryBabanki virus (BBKV) is a non-characterized arbovirus identified in 1969 in Cameroon. BBKV is closely related to Sindbis virus which causes symptoms like febrile illness, rash, and arthritis in humans and animals. Both are alphaviruses within the Western Equine Encephalitis complex. BBKV is identified only in the African continent so far. Despite its potential to cause disease, no effective treatments are available. This study investigates the vector competence of various mosquito species from temperate and tropical regions, to transmit BBKV. After mosquitoes were fed an infectious blood meal, various organs were collected at different time points to assess the infection status, viral replication, and infectiousness. The results showed that BBKV infection occurred in all tested mosquito species and persisted over time, with viral particles detected in mosquito or that can potentially be transmitted to vertebrate hosts via mosquito saliva. These findings highlight the broad vector competence of mosquitoes from diverse climatic regions for BBKV, indicating its potential risk for emergence and outbreaks in different regions of the world. The study emphasizes the need for enhanced surveillance and preventive measures to mitigate the potential threat posed by this emerging virus.

Source connections

Explore related subjects

microbiologyPreprint

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Ban, M., Geolier, V., Ferquel, E., Faye, M., Diagne, M. M., Ndiaye, E. H., Fall, G., Diallo, M., Lavillette, D., Choumet, V.. 2025-04-14. Vector Competence of Temperate and Tropical Mosquito Species for Babanki virus. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.04.14.648682

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related preprints

bioRxiv2026

A population-scale landscape of the subgingival microbiome reveals divergent routes to periodontal dysbiosis

Periodontitis is an archetypical mucosal inflammatory disease in which microbiome dysbiosis at the tooth-epithelial interface interacts with host genetic and behavioral risk factors to drive immune-mediated tissue destruction. Although subgingival microbiome compositional shifts are thought to parallel disease severity, microbiome variation at the population-level and its relationship to periodontal clinical phenotypes and disease-modifying factors remain poorly defined. Here, we use unsupervised manifold learning to map the compositional landscape of the subgingival microbiome in 1,355 adults spanning periodontal health to severe periodontitis. We identified eight latent microbiome states organized along a branching continuum from eubiosis to dysbiosis. An intermediate microbial configuration marked ecological destabilization and bifurcation into two distinct periodontitis-associated dysbiotic trajectories, distinguished by links to gingival inflammation and smoking. Although the microbiome trajectories broadly tracked periodontal destruction, a minority of individuals showed discordant microbiome-clinical phenotypes, with some individuals with periodontitis retaining otherwise eubiotic microbiomes enriched for low-abundance pathobionts, while some cases of health or mild disease had highly dysbiotic communities, suggesting distinct host susceptibility. Together, these findings define a population-scale ecological landscape of the subgingival microbiome, reveal divergent trajectories to periodontal dysbiosis, and highlight heterogeneity in the relationship between microbial community structure and clinical disease expression.

microbiology↗
bioRxiv2026

Rapid and largely reversible shifts in the canine fecal metabolome during dietary change

Diet can rapidly change the fecal metabolome, but less is known about recovery after the original diet is restored. We used untargeted UPLC-MS metabolomics to analyze 72 fecal samples from nine Pumi dogs during an owner-managed switch from dry food to raw food and back to dry food. Diet phase accounted for a large proportion of variation in both ionization modes. More than 13,000 LC-MS features changed at the first sampling point after the switch to raw food, with a similarly large response after return to dry food. Among features significant in both comparisons, more than 99% changed in opposite directions. At the final sampling point, no positive-mode (ESI+) features and only 13 negative-mode (ESI-) features differed from the second dry-food baseline under the same threshold. BARF-associated patterns persisted in analyses excluding individual dogs and in pedigree-adjusted candidate models, although individual feature effects depended on normalization. Putative metabolites from several biochemical classes differed in their response and recovery. The fecal metabolome therefore changed rapidly and returned largely toward baseline, with differences among dogs.

microbiology↗
bioRxiv2026

Taxonomic and functional concordance between full-length ONT 16S and ONT shotgun metagenomics in the canine gut microbiome

Background: Full-length Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) 16S rRNA sequencing provides a scalable view of microbial community composition and can support phylogeny-based functional prediction, but it is not equivalent to shotgun metagenomics. We asked which biological conclusions are preserved when the same canine fecal specimens are profiled by full-length ONT 16S and ONT whole-genome shotgun (WGS) sequencing, and how their agreement depends on analytical scale, reference representation and classifier. Methods: Ninety-seven fecal specimens from 51 dogs were profiled with both assays from the same DNA extract. Functional profiles predicted from NanoASV/NanoPredict with PICRUSt2 were compared with WGS-supported KEGG Ortholog (KO) profiles generated by Kadath. Taxonomy was benchmarked in a source-genome-matched RefSeq universe and in a host-specific DogMAG universe using minitax and Kraken2. Agreement was evaluated at whole-profile, feature-abundance, detection, between-sample structure and biological-inference scales. Age-associated transfer was assessed with dog-aware continuous mixed models, grouped signed-score analyses and paired/dog-blocked PERMANOVA. Results: Functional whole-profile concordance was high: median within-sample CLR Spearman correlations ranged from 0.781 to 0.860 across developmental strata, while between-sample functional structure remained significant by Mantel (rho=0.543) and Procrustes (r=0.693; both p=0.001). Feature-wise transfer was substantially weaker (median KO-wise CLR Spearman=0.318). Continuous age-associated KO slopes showed substantial cross-assay concordance (Spearman=0.727; signed-score Spearman=0.753; direction agreement=77.9%), although 1,290/5,258 eligible KOs retained significant assay-by-age interactions. Taxonomically, exact genus/species abundance agreement was much lower than agreement in between-sample ecological structure. Host-specific DogMAG improved species-level median Spearman from 0.261 to 0.656 for minitax SpeciesEstimate and from 0.181 to 0.512 for Kraken2. The classifier effect was independent of reference choice: under both RefSeq and DogMAG, minitax yielded stronger 16S-WGS concordance than Kraken2, with all eight prespecified RefSeq paired genus/species endpoints and all 10 DogMAG primary paired endpoints significant after BH correction. The same ordering extended to developmental inference, with DogMAG genus/species age-slope concordance of 0.795/0.799 for SpeciesEstimate versus 0.693/0.702 for Kraken2. Taxonomic Aitchison PERMANOVA detected age-associated structure in every assay/reference/classifier/rank combination, whereas age-by-assay interactions were consistently significant but small (R2 approximately 1.1 to 2.2%). Stricter NanoASV identity thresholds removed substantial 16S abundance without improving species-level agreement. Conclusions: The extent of cross-assay agreement depends on the level of analysis. Full-length ONT 16S preserves broad functional organization, ecological structure and much of the direction of age-associated change, but exact fine-rank composition, individual-feature abundance and effect magnitude remain assay dependent. Host-specific reference representation substantially narrows the taxonomic gap, and classifier choice exerts an additional independent effect: within the same matched reference set, minitax consistently yields stronger 16S-WGS concordance than Kraken2 across abundance, detection, ecological-distance and developmental-inference endpoints. Full-length ONT 16S is therefore well suited to broad ecological screening and hypothesis generation, whereas WGS remains preferable when conclusions depend on quantitative fine-rank composition, directly supported gene content or precise feature-level effect estimates.

microbiology↗