31 Plant Species against Blood Feeding and Disease Vectors Insects: Beyond Anti-Insect Properties, Unvalued Opportunities and Challenges for Health and Sustainability

Plants with bioactive properties are greatly useful in preventing and controlling blood-sucking and disease-vector invertebrates, particularly in developing countries and low-income communities. Their application is a promising alternative to synthetic compounds whose use remains a health, environmental, and economic challenge. However, many are still unknown and unvalued, while others are becoming ignored and threatened. The main objective of this ethnobotanical study is to identify and characterize indigenous and locally grown plants against blood-sucking and disease-vector insects. Salient opportunities and challenges of using these plants are documented and discussed. Semi-structured interviews, using a prepared questionnaire, were conducted with 228 informants. The consensus index (CI) was calculated to analyze the reliability of the collected information. The identified 31 anti-insect plant species belong to 20 botanical families, four morphological categories, and six habitat types. They can be categorized as insecticidal plants (42% of the total), insect repellent (42% of the total), and both insecticidal and insect repellent (16% of the total). More than 54% of these are still abundant in the study area, while about 35.5% have become rare and difficultly accessible. Based on the numerical importance of related anti-insect plant species, the seven targeted blood-sucking insects range in the following decreasing order: Jiggers (16 species) > Fire Ants (9 species) > Flies (8 plants) > Mosquitoes (4 species) > Fleas (2 species) > Bedbugs (1 species) > lice (0 species). The three most commonly used plants, with the highest confirmation indices, are Tetradenia riparia (ICs = 0.712), Eucalyptus globulus subsp. maidenii (ICs = 0.302), and Solanum aculeastrum (ICs = 0.288). The antimicrobial role of many locally grown anti-insect plants and the multiple other associated valorization possibilities are ignored by most informants. Domesticating, propagating, protecting, and promoting the sustainable use of these plants would be an appropriate route for their conservation and continued availability.

Identification and characterization of long noncoding RNAs and their association with acquisition of blood meal in Culex quinquefasciatus

The Southern house mosquito,Culex quinquefasciatus(Cx.quinquefasciatus)is an important vector that transmit multiple diseases including West Nile encephalitis,Japanese encephalitis,St.Louis encephalitis and lymphatic filariasis.Long noncoding RNAs(lncRNAs)involve in many biological processes such as development,infection,and virus–host interaction.However,there is no systematic identification and characterization of lncRNAs in Cx.quinquefasciatus.Here,we report the first lncRNA identification in Cx.quinquefasciatus.By using 31 public RNA-seq datasets,a total of 4763 novel lncRNA transcripts were identified,of which 3591,569,and 603 were intergenic,intronic,and antisense respectively.Examination of genomic features revealed that Cx.quinquefasciatus shared similar characteristics with other species such as short in length,low GC content,low sequence conservation,and low coding potential.Furthermore,compared to protein-coding genes,Cx.quinquefasciatus lncRNAs had lower expression values,and tended to be expressed in temporally specific fashion.In addition,weighted correlation network and functional annotation analyses showed that lncRNAs may have roles in blood meal acquisition of adult female Cx.quinquefasciatus mosquitoes.This study presents the first systematic identification and analysis of Cx.quinquefasciatus lncRNAs and their association with blood feeding.Results generated from this study will facilitate future investigation on the function of Cx.quinquefasciatus lncRNAs.