The Cadherin Superfamily in Anopheles gambiae: a Comparative Study With Drosophila melanogaster
2005
The cadherin superfamily is a diverse and multifunctional group of proteins with
extensive representation across genomes of phylogenetically distant species that is
involved in cell–cell communication and adhesion. The mosquito Anopheles gambiae
is an emerging model organism for the study of innate immunity and host–pathogen
interactions, where the malaria parasite induces a profound rearrangement of the
actin cytoskeleton at critical stages of infection. We have used bioinformatics tools
to retrieve present sequence knowledge about the complete repertoire of cadherins
in A. gambiae and compared it to that of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. In
A. gambiae, we have identified 43 genes coding for cadherin extracellular domains
that were re-annotated to 38 genes and represent an expansion of this gene family in
comparison to other invertebrate organisms. The majority of Drosophila cadherins
show a 1 : 1 Anopheles orthologue, but we have observed a remarkable expansion in
some groups in A. gambiae, such as N-cadherins, that were recently shown to have a
role in the olfactory system of the fruit fly. In vivo dsRNA silencing of overrepresented
genes in A. gambiae and other genes showing expression at critical tissues for parasite
infection will likely advance our understanding of the problems of host preference and
hostpathogen interactions in this mosquito species.
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