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ARS Home » Southeast Area » Gainesville, Florida » Center for Medical, Agricultural and Veterinary Entomology » Mosquito and Fly Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #281687
Title: Occurrence and phylogenetic characterization of a baculovirus isolated from Culex quinquefasciatus in São Paulo State, Brazil

Author
item COUTINHO, CARLOS - Butantan Institute
item ALVES, RAFAEL - Butantan Institute
item Sanscrainte, Neil
item VIVIANI, ANDREA - Vector-Borne Disease Control Program
item SANTOS, PAULO - Vector-Borne Disease Control Program
item SOUZA, POLYANA - Butantan Institute
item CARVALHO-MELLO, ISABEL - Butantan Institute
item Becnel, James

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 5/7/2012
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary: n/a

Technical Abstract: Baculoviruses are microbial agents that affects mosquito and lepidoptera larvae. They are characterized by rod-shaped virions containing circular double-stranded DNA and are the most studied insect viruses, due to their role as biological pesticides. The aim of this study was to assess the occurrence of viral infections in mosquitoes and characterize them by using molecular tools. Fortnightly collections were made of mosquito larvae in the city of Caraguatatuba. Six larvae of Culex quinquefasciatus were isolated that had white cysts (nodules) in epithelia cells of the posterior midgut indicative of infection by a baculovirus. These larvae were subjected to DNA extraction. DNA was amplified producing a fragment of around 600nt of the lef-8 gene and 400 nt of Pif-2 gene. The sequences were aligned by ClustalX 2.0 with partial sequences of the lef-8 gene of baculoviruses isolated from other insect orders taken from genebank and edited and the phylogenetic analysis was performed. The phylogenetic analysis performed with the lef-8 and pif-2 gene demonstrated that the baculovirus identified in Culex quinquefasciatus in Caraguatatuba region is most closely related to that of Culex nigripalpus nucleopolyhedrosis baculovirus.