Efficiency of mosquito-borne disease transmission is dependent upon both the preference and fidelity of mosquitoes as they seek the blood of vertebrate hosts. While mosquitoes select their blood hosts through multi-modal integration of sensory cues, host-seeking is primarily an odor-guided behavior. Differences in mosquito responses to hosts and their odors have been demonstrated to have a genetic component, but the underlying genomic architecture of these responses has yet to be fully resolved. Here, we provide the first characterization of the genomic architecture of host preference in the polymorphic mosquito species, Culex pipiens. The species exists as two morphologically identical bioforms, each with distinct avian and mammalian host preferences. Cx. pipiens females with empirically measured host responses were prepared into reduced representation DNA libraries and sequenced to identify genomic regions associated with host preference. Multiple genomic regions associated with host preference were identified on all 3 Culex chromosomes, and these genomic regions contained clusters of chemosensory genes, as expected based on work in Anopheles gambiae complex mosquitoes and in Aedes aegypti. One odorant receptor and one odorant binding protein gene showed one-to-one orthologous relationships to differentially expressed genes in A. gambiae complex members with divergent host preferences. Overall, our work identifies a distinct set of odorant receptors and odorant binding proteins that may enable Cx. pipiens females to distinguish between their vertebrate blood host species, and opens avenues for future functional studies that could measure the unique contributions of each gene to host preference phenotypes.

蚊媒疾病的传播效率取决于蚊子对脊椎动物宿主血液的偏好和忠诚度。虽然蚊子通过感觉线索的多模式整合来选择它们的血液宿主，但寻找宿主主要是一种气味引导的行为。蚊子对宿主及其气味的反应差异已被证明具有遗传成分，但这些反应的潜在基因组结构尚未完全解决。在这里，我们首次描述了多态性蚊子——淡色库蚊（Culex pipiens）中宿主偏好的基因组结构。该物种以两种形态相同的生物形态存在，每种生物形态都有不同的鸟类和哺乳动物宿主偏好。CX。将具有经验测量的宿主反应的雌性pipiens制备成简化代表性DNA文库，并进行测序以鉴定与宿主偏好相关的基因组区域。在所有 3 条库蚊染色体上都鉴定出了与宿主偏好相关的多个基因组区域，并且这些基因组区域包含化学感应基因簇，正如根据冈比亚按蚊复合体蚊子和埃及伊蚊的工作所预期的那样。一种气味受体和一种气味结合蛋白基因与具有不同宿主偏好的冈比亚冈比亚复合体成员中差异表达的基因表现出一对一的直系同源关系。总体而言，我们的工作确定了一组独特的气味受体和气味结合蛋白，它们可能使Cx 发挥作用。pipiens雌性区分其脊椎动物血液宿主物种，并为未来的功能研究开辟了途径，可以测量每个基因对宿主偏好表型的独特贡献。