Insect vectors durably transmit many important human and animal diseases. Insects are mobile, adaptable and difficult to control, which makes them efficient vehicles for disease emergence, spread and maintenance. Genomic tools have been applied to the study of vectors and vector control, and some insects such as the African malaria vector Anopheles gambiae have now become new model organisms for natural host-pathogen interactions. We study mosquito vectors of malaria and arboviruses, which generates four main kinds of large-scale data that requires dedicated bioinformatics expertise: i) functional dissection of mosquito immune signaling pathways by RNAseq transcriptome profiling to detect responses to pathogen infection and/or silencing of target genes, including mRNA as well as small and other non-coding RNAs, ii) next-gen genetic linkage mapping by deep sequencing of index-tagged phenotyped individual mosquitoes, iii) population genomic analysis by whole-genome sequencing of hundreds of individual 250Mb mosquito genomes, iv) metagenomic analysis of the mosquito microbiome and pathogen susceptibility, and of ecological metagenomic communities in field samples of mosquito vectors.

We are involved, in collboration with the WHO, in the SaMARA which aims at detecting the emergence of antimalarial drug resistance in Africa. Samples (dried blood spots) are collected from the Nantio