Sheila Ons

From

National University of La Plata, CONICET - AR

In residence at

Insect Biology Research Institute (IRBI), University of Tours / CNRS - FR

Host scientist

Claudio Lazzari

BIOGRAPHY

Sheila Ons is a biologist from University of Buenos Aires with a PhD in Neuroscience from Autonomous University of Barcelona and 20 years of experience in entomology. She specializes in insect neuroendocrinology, detoxification, and insecticide resistance. Currently, she is a Principal Researcher at the Argentinean National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET). Since 2012, she has also been the leader of the Insect Neurobiology Lab at the Center for Experimental and Applied Endocrinology (CENEXA), which is jointly dependent on CONICET and the National University of La Plata (La Plata, Argentina). She also serves as the Sub-Director of CENEXA. Throughout her career, she has utilized techniques related to physiology, molecular biology, proteomics, transcriptomics, genomics, and bioinformatics to study insect vectors of neglected diseases, such as mosquitoes and kissing bugs. She is the author of numerous research papers and has extensive experience in project planning and the supervision of PhD students and young researchers. 

PROJECT

Role of chemosensory proteins in taste sense in the mosquito Aedes aegypti, vector of dengue and other arboviruses

Aedes aegypti is an urban mosquito, vector of emergent arboviruses such as dengue, yellow fever, zika, and chikungunya. Mosquitoes use taste organs in mouthparts and legs to guide behaviors such as feeding, biting, and egg-lying. Therefore, taste sense is crucial for their survival and reproduction, and consequently for the spread of arboviruses. Despite this, the taste system remains understudied in mosquito species. Chemosensory proteins are a family of globular proteins, with an assigned role in transporting hydrophobic odor molecules through hemolymph, to reach odorant receptors in antennae. Recent evidence suggests that the role of this protein family goes far beyond the olfactory system, in processes such as detoxification, insecticide resistance, development, nutrition, etc. We propose that they could also have an understudied role in the taste sense; the objective of the present proposal is to describe new components in the mosquito taste molecular machinery. In particular, we will generate evidence on the involvement of chemosensory proteins in the taste recognition of an appetitive and an aversive compound in adult females of A. aegypti. For this, we will silence the expression of chemosensory protein-encoding genes by RNAi-mediated gene silencing in A. aegypti, by feeding larvae with dsRNA. A preference two-choice biting bioassay will be performed with both appetitive and aversive stimuli, to evaluate if chemosensory proteins are involved in taste perception in these mosquitoes. Progress in understanding the molecular machinery of mosquito taste sense will provide new tools for controlling mosquitoes, and could help in the development of new-generation repellents, with an impact on infectious diseases spreading.