Mosquito transmitted diseases, such as malaria, dengue fever, and encephalitis claim millions of lives worldwide each year. My laboratory is using modern genomics and bioinformatics tools to study the basic genetics and physiology of mosquitoes with the long-term goal of reducing the burden of vector-borne infectious diseases. My research program includes three areas.

We are interested in mosquito transposable elements (TEs), which are a group of mobile genetic elements that are able to replicate and spread in the genome. Our objectives are to understand the fundamental biology, the genomic context, and evolutionary impact of TEs as well as to explore the applications of TEs as molecular tools to manipulate mosquito genomes for the purpose of interrupting transmission of pathogens. Secondly, we are conducting comparative genomics research using a range of mosquitoes to provide high-resolution identification of regulatory elements, uncover gene expansions/loss/rearrangements, and reveal correlation between these genetic changes and biological adaptations.

Finally, we have recently identified a number of mosquito-specific microRNAs (miRNAs), which are a novel class of gene modulating molecules. miRNAs are ~22 nucleotide long non-coding RNAs that modulate the expression of cellular genes by binding to cognate mRNAs for cleavage or translational repression. miRNAs are widely distributed in metazoans and plants. Many miRNAs exhibit finely controlled spatio-temporal expression profiles. Several of these have been shown to be key regulatory molecules during embryonic development, stem cell division, and cell death. miRNAs are also implicated in cancer and control of viral infection. Several mosquito miRNAs display temporal and tissue-specific expression. We are investigating the functions of some of these miRNAs.