Jason Rasgon
Zambia
Bloomberg School of Public Health, PhD program
Mosquito vectors of malaria exhibit great variation in their ability to support the development of the Plasmodium parasite, yet the genetic basis of such differences remains largely unknown. Thus far, regions of the mosquito genome responsible for susceptibility and resistance to malaria infection, or quantitative trait loci (QTL), have been identified for natural Anopheles gambiae populations but have not been investigated in Anopheles arabiensis, a primary malaria vector in southern Africa. We propose to search for naturally occuring QTL for resistance to P. falciparum development in A. arabiensis populations in southern Zambia. We hope to identify novel resistance loci and to determine whether previously identified QTL in A. gambiae are also found in A. arabiensis.
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