MICROSATELLITE POLYMORPHISM IN ANOPHELES MACULATUS, A MALARIA VECTOR IN THAILAND

Dinucleotide microsatellites were characterized from Anopheles maculat us, a species of mosquito that transmits malaria. A partial genomic li brary of An. maculatus, consisting of 3,960 kilobases (kb), was screen ed with either (GT)(12) or (CT)(12) probes. Approximately 1.5% of the recombinants contained sequences that hybridized to either (GT)(12) or (CT)(12) dinucleotide probes, suggesting that microsatellites are abu ndant in the genome of An. maculatus. Estimation of abundance of the t wo dinucleotide repeats revealed that (GT)(n) or (CA)(n) microsatellit es occur on average every 68 kb and (CT)(n) or (GA)(n) repeats every 4 95 kb. Among 23 microsatellite loci sequenced, four loci were selected to synthesize primers to perform polymerase chain reaction scoring fo r genetic polymorphism in a population of An. maculatus. A high level of polymorphism was observed with all four microsatellite loci analyze d. The number of alleles detected at each locus ranged from eight to 1 2 and the heterozygosities ranged from 0.25 to 0.54. A total of 42 all eles were found among four microsatellite loci. The large number of al leles and polymorphic nature resolved from microsatellite loci make th ese markers valuable for the study of population genetic structure and gene flow. Knowledge of gene flow is required to develop vector contr ol strategies using genetic manipulations of malaria vector population s.