Microbial Containment Complex, National Institute of Virology, Sus Road, Pashan, Pune-411001, India.
Mosquito densoviruses belongs to family Parvoviridae, sub-family Densovirinae genus Brevidensovirus. They are known to persistently infect the insect cell line and mosquito population in nature, causing mortality in mosquitoes. During recent outbreak of Chikungunya virus in Indian continents, mosquitoes were received from various states in India. The presence of MDV is known to alter the susceptibility of mosquitoes to dengue virus, with a view to assess association of this infection in the Ae. aegypti populations where Chikungunya virus activity was noticed different geographical strains were screened. The investigations on various Aedes aegypti mosquito populations showed presence of densovirus in some of the populations. The virus was isolated using clean laboratory colony of Ae. aegypti mosquitoes. The identity of the isolate was confirmed by PCR using densovirus specific primers and electron microscopy. The polyclonal immune serum was raised in mice using CsCl gradient purified fraction, which was further adsorbed on homogenate prepared from clean mosquitoes tissues. The virus stock was prepared by infecting very large number of Ae. aegypti mosquitoes from the clean colony. The western blotting studies were used to characterize structural proteins of the virus using CsCl gradient purified and immunoprecipited fraction obtained from infected mosquito's homogenates. Laboratory experiments showed high mortality in the batches of Ae. aegypti treated with higher concentrations of virus. The mortality was very high in unnatural hosts like Culex tritaeniorhynchus. The 1097 bp genome sequence showed 97% identity with that of densovirus reported from Ae. aegypti densonucleosis virus.
The present communication reports the isolation and characterization of a densovirus from Ae. aegypti mosquito (AeMDV) and its presence in different mosquito populations.
