Warmth shifts rather than speeds transcriptomic ageing in the malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae
- 1Visva-Bharati
Abstract
Only older mosquitoes transmit malaria, so how warming changes mosquito ageing matters for disease. Warmer temperatures are known to make mosquitoes age faster, but 'faster' can mean two different things: the ageing clock ticks more quickly, or it is simply set forward. We distinguished these by reanalysing 115 whole-body RNA-sequencing libraries from female Anopheles gambiae kept at 27, 30 or 32 {degrees}C and sampled 1-15 days after emergence. A transcriptomic clock trained on 27 {degrees}C mosquitoes (error {+/-}0.9 days) read 32 {degrees}C mosquitoes as 2.4 days older (95% CI 1.9-2.9) and 30 {degrees}C mosquitoes as 1.1 days older. The gap opened by day 5 and then stopped growing: between days 5 and 15, warmth added 0.01 extra days per day (95% CI -0.16 to 0.19), well below the 0.29-0.45 expected if the clock ran faster. Genome-wide, warmth advanced genes that change late in life, notably melanisation and digestive genes, but moved early-maturation genes the opposite way. Many responses bent at 30 {degrees}C, and immune genes held until 30 {degrees}C before falling. Warmth therefore shifts mosquitoes to an older transcriptional state without accelerating its pace.
Related
- Genomic analysis of DDT resistance identifies importance of glutathione transferases in driving evolutionary response to vector control in the malaria vector Anopheles gambiae
- The brain of the female Anopheles gambiae mosquito at spatial and single-cell resolution
- Multi-tissue GAL4-mediated gene expression in all Anopheles gambiae life stages using an endogenous polyubiquitin promoter
- Functional disruption of vgsc reveals haplosufficiency with implications for insecticide resistance and genetic control in Anopheles gambiae
- Gene-poor, repeat-rich Y chromosomes in two Neotropical malaria vectors, Anopheles cruzii and Anopheles aquasalis
BibTeX
@misc{sinha2026warmth,
title = {{Warmth shifts rather than speeds transcriptomic ageing in the malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae}},
author = {K. Sinha and N. Ghosh and S. Banerjee},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.64898/2026.10.13.758761},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.13.758761v1},
note = {CC BY-NC},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Warmth shifts rather than speeds transcriptomic ageing in the malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae
AU - K. Sinha
AU - N. Ghosh
AU - S. Banerjee
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/13
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.10.13.758761
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.13.758761v1
AB - Only older mosquitoes transmit malaria, so how warming changes mosquito ageing matters for disease. Warmer temperatures are known to make mosquitoes age faster, but 'faster' can mean two different things: the ageing clock ticks more quickly, or it is simply set forward. We distinguished these by reanalysing 115 whole-body RNA-sequencing libraries from female Anopheles gambiae kept at 27, 30 or 32 {degrees}C and sampled 1-15 days after emergence. A transcriptomic clock trained on 27 {degrees}C mosquitoes (error {+/-}0.9 days) read 32 {degrees}C mosquitoes as 2.4 days older (95% CI 1.9-2.9) and 30 {degrees}C mosquitoes as 1.1 days older. The gap opened by day 5 and then stopped growing: between days 5 and 15, warmth added 0.01 extra days per day (95% CI -0.16 to 0.19), well below the 0.29-0.45 expected if the clock ran faster. Genome-wide, warmth advanced genes that change late in life, notably melanisation and digestive genes, but moved early-maturation genes the opposite way. Many responses bent at 30 {degrees}C, and immune genes held until 30 {degrees}C before falling. Warmth therefore shifts mosquitoes to an older transcriptional state without accelerating its pace.
ER -