Insects that feed by ingesting plant and animal fluids cause devastating damage to humans, livestock, and agriculture worldwide, primarily by transmitting pathogens of plants and animals. The feeding processes required for successful pathogen transmission by sucking insects can be recorded by monitoring voltage changes across an insect-food source feeding circuit. The output from such monitorin...

Age is a critical determinant of the ability of most arthropod vectors to transmit a range of human pathogens. This is due to the fact that most pathogens require a period of extrinsic incubation in the arthropod host before pathogen transmission can occur. This developmental period for the pathogen often comprises a significant proportion of the expected lifespan of the vector. As such, only a...

When an haematophagous sand fly vector insect bites a vertebrate host, it introduces its mouthparts into the skin and lacerates blood vessels, forming a hemorrhagic pool which constitutes an intricate environment of cell interactions. In this scenario, the initial performance of host, parasite, and vector "authors" will heavily influence the course of Leishmania infection. Recent advances in ve...

We established a method for production of recombinant adeno-associated virus type 5 (rAAV5) in insect cells by use of baculovirus expression vectors. One baculovirus harbors a transgene between the inverted terminal repeat sequences of type 5, and the second expresses Rep78 and Rep52. Interestingly, the replacement of type 5 Rep52 with type 1 Rep52 generated four times more rAAV5 particles. We ...

West Nile virus spread rapidly from east to west across North America, despite the north-south migratory flyways of its avian hosts. In this issue, Venkatesan & Rasgon (2010) present new data on the population genetics of Culex tarsalis, the dominant West Nile virus vector in the Western United States, suggesting that patterns of mosquito gene flow may better reflect the virus's expansion from ...

Yersinia pestis, the causative agent of bubonic and pneumonic plague, is typically a zoonotic vector-borne disease of wild rodents. Bacterial biofilm formation in the proventriculus of the flea contributes to chronic infection of fleas and facilitates efficient disease transmission. However prior to biofilm formation, ingested bacteria must survive within the flea midgut, and yet little is know...

The family Ascoviridae includes viruses with circular dsDNA genomes of 100-200 kbp characterized by oblong enveloped virions of 200-400 nm in length. Ascoviruses mainly infect lepidopteran larvae and are mechanically transmitted by parasitoid wasps in which they may also replicate. Most known members belong to the genus Ascovirus, except one virus, that of the genus Toursvirus, which replicates...

The gag and env genes of the feline immunodeficiency virus strain UT113 were cloned into a baculovirus transfer vector. The recombinant plasmids were used to create recombinant baculoviruses that expressed either the gag or the env precursor protein in insect cells (Sf9 cells). Leader sequence cleavage occurred in Sf9 cells expressing the envelope precursor, but further processing was not obser...