The genome sequence of the malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae.
Holt RA., Subramanian GM., Halpern A., Sutton GG., Charlab R., Nusskern DR., Wincker P., Clark AG., Ribeiro JMC., Wides R., Salzberg SL., Loftus B., Yandell M., Majoros WH., Rusch DB., Lai Z., Kraft CL., Abril JF., Anthouard V., Arensburger P., Atkinson PW., Baden H., de Berardinis V., Baldwin D., Benes V., Biedler J., Blass C., Bolanos R., Boscus D., Barnstead M., Cai S., Center A., Chaturverdi K., Christophides GK., Chrystal MA., Clamp M., Cravchik A., Curwen V., Dana A., Delcher A., Dew I., Evans CA., Flanigan M., Grundschober-Freimoser A., Friedli L., Gu Z., Guan P., Guigo R., Hillenmeyer ME., Hladun SL., Hogan JR., Hong YS., Hoover J., Jaillon O., Ke Z., Kodira C., Kokoza E., Koutsos A., Letunic I., Levitsky A., Liang Y., Lin J-J., Lobo NF., Lopez JR., Malek JA., McIntosh TC., Meister S., Miller J., Mobarry C., Mongin E., Murphy SD., O'Brochta DA., Pfannkoch C., Qi R., Regier MA., Remington K., Shao H., Sharakhova MV., Sitter CD., Shetty J., Smith TJ., Strong R., Sun J., Thomasova D., Ton LQ., Topalis P., Tu Z., Unger MF., Walenz B., Wang A., Wang J., Wang M., Wang X., Woodford KJ., Wortman JR., Wu M., Yao A., Zdobnov EM., Zhang H., Zhao Q., Zhao S., Zhu SC., Zhimulev I., Coluzzi M., della Torre A., Roth CW., Louis C., Kalush F., Mural RJ., Myers EW., Adams MD., Smith HO., Broder S., Gardner MJ., Fraser CM., Birney E., Bork P., Brey PT., Venter JC., Weissenbach J., Kafatos FC., Collins FH., Hoffman SL.
Anopheles gambiae is the principal vector of malaria, a disease that afflicts more than 500 million people and causes more than 1 million deaths each year. Tenfold shotgun sequence coverage was obtained from the PEST strain of A. gambiae and assembled into scaffolds that span 278 million base pairs. A total of 91% of the genome was organized in 303 scaffolds; the largest scaffold was 23.1 million base pairs. There was substantial genetic variation within this strain, and the apparent existence of two haplotypes of approximately equal frequency ("dual haplotypes") in a substantial fraction of the genome likely reflects the outbred nature of the PEST strain. The sequence produced a conservative inference of more than 400,000 single-nucleotide polymorphisms that showed a markedly bimodal density distribution. Analysis of the genome sequence revealed strong evidence for about 14,000 protein-encoding transcripts. Prominent expansions in specific families of proteins likely involved in cell adhesion and immunity were noted. An expressed sequence tag analysis of genes regulated by blood feeding provided insights into the physiological adaptations of a hematophagous insect.