Back

Controlling malaria mosquito reproduction via the octopamine beta2 receptor

Ellis, D. A.; Bagi, J.; Terry, S.; Doran, E.; Tytheridge, S.; Xu, Y. Y.; Su, M.; Lombardi, M.; Iacomelli, G.; Peirce, M. J.; Ligato, M.; Terrazas, D.; Ntabaliba, W.; Moore, S. J.; Albert, J.; Spaccapelo, R.; Andres, M.

2025-08-24 neuroscience
10.1101/2025.08.20.670845 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Mosquito reproduction in a broad sense involves multiple steps from acoustic recognition of mating partners to egg hatching. We show that the octopamine receptor AgOct{beta}2R controls different aspects of this process in a sexually dimorphic manner. AgOct{beta}2R knockout males present auditory defects that impair their ability to inseminate females, whilst knockout females are sterile. These phenotypes suggest AgOct{beta}2R as a target to impair mosquito reproduction at multiple levels. We test the reproductive effects of the insecticide amitraz, an AgOct{beta}2R agonist, showing that amitraz exposure reduces insemination in the lab but not in the field and has no effects on female sterility, excluding its applicability as a mating disruptor. Pharmacological assays reveal that AgOct{beta}2R sensitivity to amitraz is reduced compared to other arthropods, but its responses can be altered by modifying residues in the binding pocket. Together, our results establish AgOct{beta}2R as a promising target to disrupt mosquito reproduction but emphasize the necessity of developing new tools to exploit this approach.

Matching journals

The top 5 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

1
eLife
● 5828 papers in training set
Top 4%
18.1%
Similar papers in this journal
2
Nature Communications
○ 5641 papers in training set
Top 13%
14.7%
Similar papers in this journal
3
Science Advances
● 1243 papers in training set
Top 1%
9.4%
Similar papers in this journal
4
PLOS Pathogens
● 820 papers in training set
Top 2%
6.6%
Similar papers in this journal
5
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
● 2444 papers in training set
Top 6%
6.6%
Similar papers in this journal
50% of probability mass above
6
BMC Biology
○ 265 papers in training set
Top 0.3%
5.3%
7
PLOS Biology
● 486 papers in training set
Top 0.5%
5.3%
8
Communications Biology
○ 993 papers in training set
Top 5%
3.3%
9
iScience
○ 1154 papers in training set
Top 8%
3.1%
10
Current Biology
○ 665 papers in training set
Top 5%
2.6%
11
PNAS Nexus
◐ 159 papers in training set
Top 0.5%
2.4%
12
Scientific Reports
○ 3612 papers in training set
Top 43%
2.3%
13
Science
● 477 papers in training set
Top 6%
1.5%
14
Insect Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
○ 30 papers in training set
Top 0.2%
1.4%
15
PLOS Computational Biology
● 1863 papers in training set
Top 16%
1.4%
16
PLOS Genetics
● 862 papers in training set
Top 9%
1.3%
17
PLOS ONE
● 5266 papers in training set
Top 51%
1.3%
18
PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases
● 466 papers in training set
Top 4%
1.1%
19
Cell Reports
○ 1498 papers in training set
Top 24%
1.1%
20
mBio
● 833 papers in training set
Top 10%
1.1%
21
The Journal of Neuroscience
● 1025 papers in training set
Top 9%
1.0%
22
Open Biology
● 106 papers in training set
Top 2%
0.6%
23
EMBO Molecular Medicine
○ 95 papers in training set
Top 4%
0.6%

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.