Mosquito ageing and malaria transmission: investigation of host-parasite interactions across the insect life span.

Mosquitoes, like all complex matricellular organisms, undergo ageing. Yet, we know remarkably little about the sequence of changes taking place in these insects towards the end of their lifespan. This is of particular interest as some of them are vectors of numerous human pathogens, including the malaria parasites called Plasmodium.

As the transmission through the insect is crucial for parasite development and the spread of disease, parasites evolved the ability to alter the speed of their development to adapt to the mosquito age and nutritional status. The molecular mechanisms responsible for this process however remain poorly understood.

A PhD student paid with this studentship will be working on the intersection of Modrzynska team (providing expertise in transcriptomics and malaria transmission), McClure team (insect biology and ageing) and Baldini team (mosquito population biology), in order to systematically study the interplay between the insect ageing and parasite transmission. The student will use the state-of-the-art transcriptomics methods, to monitor the gene expression in both mosquitoes and parasites from infection initiated at different points of the insect lifespan.

They will be trained in parasitology/molecular biology techniques but will also have an opportunity to acquire basic training in bioinformatics and develop expertise in transcriptomics data analysis.