Sex specific molecular responses of Quick-To-Court in Indian malarial vector Anopheles culicifacies: Conflict of mating and/or blood feeding?

Understanding the molecular basis of mosquito behavioral complexity is central to the design of novel molecular tool to fight against their vector borne diseases. Although, olfactory system play important role to guide and manage many behavioral co-ordinates including feeding, mating, breeding etc., but the sex specific regulation of olfactory responses remains unanswered. From our ongoing transcriptomic data annotation of blood fed adult female olfactory tissue of A. culicifacies mosquito, we identified a 383 bp long unique transcript encoding Drosophila homolog of Quick-To-Court protein, previously shown to regulate the courtship behavior in adult male Drosophila. A comprehensive in silico analysis predicts Ac-qtc is 1536 bp long single copy gene encoding 511 AA long protein, having high degree of conservation with other insect homolog. Age dependent increased expression of putative Ac-qtc in the naïve mosquitoes correlates the maturation of olfactory system, necessary to meet sex specific conflicting demand of mating (mate finding) vs. host-seeking behavioral responses. Though, 16-18 hour of starvation did not altered Ac-qtc expression in both the sexes, however blood feeding significantly modulated its response in the adult female mosquitoes, confirming that it may not be involved in sugar feeding associated behavioural regulation. Finally, a behavioural-cum-molecular assay indicated that natural dysregulation of Ac-qtc in late evening may promotes key mating event of successful insemination process. We hypothesize that Ac-qtc may play unique role to meet and manage the sex specific conflicting demand of mosquito courtship behaviour and/or blood feeding behaviour in the adult female mosquitoes. A molecular mechanism elucidation may provide new knowledge to consider Ac-qtc as a key molecular target for mosquito borne disease management.