Community Perception Regarding Mosquito-Borne Diseases in Some Selected Areas of Ganjam District of Odisha State, India.

Mosquito-borne diseases are a major public health concern. Because of absence of effective therapy and vaccination to treat and prevent such vector-borne diseases, these initial cases have triggered strong concerns within medical communities, turning a bad dream into reality. To date, reducing the mosquito vector population remains the main strategy to control the transmission of mosquito borne diseases. In this connection, community-based perception recognized as an essential tool for long-term vector control management. In this study, a community perception survey was carried out in six selected study areas of Ganjam district of Odisha. A total of 3257 inhabitants from randomly chosen 600 no. of houses from 06 selected study areas were interviewed using a pre-tested structured questionnaire about various mosquito vector-borne diseases. As an outcome, we found that only 36% of people have basic knowledge and idea about vector-borne diseases, out of which only 14% know Anopheles as a causative agent whereas Aedes and Culex were very least concern. Regarding the source of knowledge, electronic media was the principal source of information, while the involvements of health personnel were least mentioned. Results of the current study indicates the necessity to plan health education program to bring important perceptions regarding vector-borne diseases at school and college level because the infrequent source of knowledge is the main cause of an increase in the disease incidence.

In Silico Characterization of Intracellular Localization Signals and Structural Features of Mosquito Densovirus (MDV) Viral Proteins.

As entomopathogenic viruses, mosquito densoviruses (MDVs) are widely studied for their potential as biocontrol agents and molecular laboratory tools for mosquito manipulation. The nucleus of the mosquito cell is the site for MDV genome replication and capsid assembly, however the nuclear localization signals (NLSs) and nuclear export signals (NES) for MDV proteins have not yet been identified. We carried out an in silico analysis to identify putative NLSs and NESs in the viral proteins of densoviruses that infect diverse mosquito genera (Aedes, Anopheles, and Culex) and identified putative phosphorylation and glycosylation sites on these proteins. These analyses lead to a more comprehensive understanding of how MDVs are transported into and out of the nucleus and lay the foundation for the potential use of densoviruses in mosquito control and basic research.

SNP barcoding based on decision tree algorithm: A new tool for identification of mosquito species with special reference to Anopheles.

Molecular taxonomy based identification of species in the form of DNA barcodes are extensively used in evolutionary systematics. Almost all the DNA barcodes contain detailed information of the barcoding gene along with uninformative sequences of a particular species. Therefore, a technique is highly essential to remove or to reduce the number of uninformative sequences and ought to create species-specific barcodes for differentiation. The actual variation in genetic sequences, called single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping, can be utilized to develop a new tool for rapid, reliable, and high-throughput assay to distinguish the known species. SNPs act as important hereditary markers for uncovering the evolutionary history and normal genetic polymorphisms. Keeping in mind, we propose a decision tree-based barcoding (DTB) algorithm for generating SNP barcodes from the DNA barcoding sequence of several evolutionarily related species to accurately identify a single species. To address this issue, we analyzed mitochondrial COI gene sequences of 64 species of Anopheles mosquitoes. After alignment and truncating, 32 SNPs were discovered in COI gene sequences of Anopheles mosquitoes and then computed to set up the decision rule for constructing the decision tree. The decision tree based barcoding algorithm generates 126 nodes and 32 loci for discriminating 64 Anopheles mosquito species. Finally, we concluded that the DTB method is useful and effective for generating sequence tags for Anopheles mosquito species identification.

Morphological and genetic analyses of the first record of longrakered trevally, Ulua mentalis (Perciformes: Carangidae) and of the pinjalo snapper, Pinjalo pinjalo (Perciformes: Lutjanidae) in the Odisha coast, Bay of Bengal.

Identification of fish species have so far been carried out mostly by classical morpho-taxonomy. In the present study, however, an attempt has been taken to identify two species of fishes Ulua mentalis and Pinjalo pinjalo of order Perciformes which happens to be the first record in Odisha coast Bay of Bengal, India during the year 2015, using DNA barcoding technique for reconfirmation over conventional morpho-taxonomy. During recent past, study of molecular-taxonomical profile of mitochondrial DNA in general and Cytochrome Oxidase subunit I (COI) gene in particular has gained enormous importance for accurate identification of species. In the present study, the partial COI sequence of Ulua mentalis and Pinjalo pinjalo were generated. Analysis using the COI gene produced phylogenetic trees in concurrence with other multi gene studies and we came across the identical phylogenetic relationship considering Neighbor-Joining and Maximum Likelihood tree. Moreover, these molecular data set further testified in Bayesian framework to reevaluate the exact taxonomic groupings within the family. Surprisingly, Ulua mentalis and Pinjalo pinjalo seems to be closely related to their sister taxa.