PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - José L. Ruiz
AU  - Lisa C. Ranford-Cartwright
AU  - Elena Gómez-Díaz
TI  - The regulatory genome of the malaria vector <em>Anopheles gambiae</em>: integrating chromatin accessibility and gene expression
AID  - 10.1101/2020.06.22.164228
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.06.22.164228
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/09/10/2020.06.22.164228.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/09/10/2020.06.22.164228.full
AB  - Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes are primary human malaria vectors, but we know very little about mechanisms of transcriptional regulation. We profiled chromatin accessibility by ATAC-seq in laboratory-reared An. gambiae mosquitoes experimentally infected with the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. By integrating ATAC-seq, RNA-seq and ChIP-seq data we showed a positive correlation between accessibility at promoters and introns, gene expression and active histone marks. By comparing expression and chromatin structure patterns in different tissues, we were able to infer cis-regulatory elements controlling tissue specific gene expression and to predict the in vivo binding sites of relevant transcription factors. The ATAC-seq assay also allowed the precise mapping of active regulatory regions, including novel transcription start sites and enhancers that annotate to mosquito immune-response genes. This study is important not only for advancing our understanding of mechanisms of transcriptional regulation in the mosquito vector of human malaria, but the information is of great potential for developing new mosquito-control and anti-malaria strategies.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.