Comparative Characterization of Neurotransmitter Receptor Genes in Tsetse Fly Genomes

Abstract

Tsetse flies are the sole vectors of African trypanosomiasis throughout sub-Saharan Africa. African trypanosomiasis is transmitted by the tsetse fly to humans (sleeping sickness or Human African Trypanosomiasis) and livestock (nagana or Animal African Trypanosomiasis) throughout sub-Saharan Africa, with an estimated 70 million people at risk of infection. The reduction or elimination of tsetse populations is an effective method for disease control that could be improved with greater knowledge of their biology and genetics. This study describes the comparative identification of neurotransmitter receptor genes in six tsetse fly species namely G. morsitans morsitans,                       G. fuscipes fuscipes, G. pallidipes, G. brevipalpis, G. palpalis and G. austeni. Putative neurotransmitter receptor (NTR) genes were characterized and analyzed. Phylogenetic relationships among six recently published genomes of tsetse species were described so as to improve vector control techniques. Genomic data was sourced from flybase and vectorbase. Data collected was analzed by: Blast algorithm blastn with an e-value of 1e-5 which was used to search for blast hits of NTR genes in the subject genome, G. morsitans morsitans, G. fuscipes fuscipes,  G. pallidipes, G. brevipalpis, G. austeni and G. palpalis at Vectorbase. Multiple sequence alignment of the final annotated NTR amino acid sequences of each type and query homologs was done using MUSCLE software. The alignment was analyzed using jalview tool. Maximum likelihood phylogenetic tree was constructed for each category of NTRs using 500 bootstraps with gamma distributed changes as statistical method and best-fitting amino acid evolutionary model. MEGA6 software was used to construct the phylogenetic trees. The results were presented using appropriate tables and figures.