Gut bacterial diversity in Plasmodium-infected and Plasmodium-uninfected Anopheles minimus

Abstract

Anopheles minimus is one of the main malaria vectors in Thailand. Plasmodium transmission depends primarily on the success of the parasite survival in the mosquito’s gut. Several factors affect the development of Plasmodium in the mosquito, including the gut microbiota. Here, we used culture-independent method to identify microbiota and compared the bacterial communities in the gut of Plasmodium-infected and Plasmodium-uninfected mosquitoes. Fifty-three genera within four phyla were detected and 14 of them were discovered in malaria vectors for the first time. In addition, we found that the bacterial diversity and the profile of the gut bacterial communities between the Plasmodium-infected and those of the uninfected mosquitoes were quite different. The result showed that the bacterial diversity in the gut of the uninfected mosquitoes was also much higher than that of the infected counterpart. Gammaproteobacteria were prevalent in the infected An. minimus while betaproteobacteria were the most abundant in the uninfected mosquitoes. Three genera, Acinetobacter in gammaproteobacteria, Alcaligenes and Burkholderia in betaproteobacteria were the core set of bacteria found in the gut of the malaria vector.