@entomososwin.bsky.social
K99 Postdoctoral Fellow at CAES in Medical Entomology 🦟 When not in lab I enjoy cooking, cocktails, birding, backpacking, mushrooming, and all things outdoors. | she/her https://www.rebeccamjohnson.me/
👀There will be a Keystone Symposium with a focus on Vector-Pathogen Interactions to be held in Geneva, Switzerland in February 2027. It should be a great meeting and hope to see you there! www.keystonesymposia.org/conferences/...
Implications of successive blood feeding on #dengue virus inhibition by Wolbachia in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes
@entomososwin.bsky.social @mallerybreban.bsky.social @brackneylab.bsky.social @chantalvogels.bsky.social @yaleemd.bsky.social
Jane Goodall was my first childhood hero, as I loved animals as a kid and was inspired by her story. I still remember the National Geographic specials about her. RIP.
Some of you may remember my rant about getting surprise charged $653 for a medically necessary ultrasound to screen for the cancer that killed my mother.
Well, I wrote about it, and now my bad experience has been made into a cartoon for The Out of Network Network!
open.substack.com/pub/outofnet...
So great to finally have this out!!
Today I found out that my NIH NIAID K99 looking at mosquito basement membrane repair processes was funded!!! Thank you to my mentor @brackneylab.bsky.social, my co-mentor Andrea Page-McCaw, my colleagues & letter writers, the outstanding people at NIH, and everyone else who has been so supportive!!
NEWS: The @entsocamerica.bsky.social Governing Board has elected nine new Fellows of the Society for 2025: Joanna Chiu, Laura Harrington, John Heraty, Margaret Mayfield, Bob Peterson, Paula Shrewsbury, Andrew Suarez, Michael Ulyshen, and Jessica Ware. MORE: entsoc.org/news/press-r...
Hi! I'm originally from Maine but currently a senior postdoc at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. I study mosquito biology and how this impacts virus transmission. Recently a lot of my work has been looking at how virus moves through the mosquito body and overcomes various barriers.
Our first Wolbachia paper now published in Nature Communications! 🦟 Check out Becky's thread! 👇
I hope that future studies will examine the impact of more frequent feeding on Wolbachia-based pathogen-blocking in other Wolbachia-mosquito combinations and that this helps inform future control and modeling efforts. Thanks for following and check out the paper for more details! 12/12
This may have implications for Wolbachia-transinfected mosquito release programs and could indicate that Wolbachia has a greater impact than current model predictions that only account for single blood feedings. 11/12
While this work was largely done using certain strains of wAlbB and Aedes aegypti and may not hold true for all Wolbachia-mosquito combinations, this study indicates that Wolbachia-based pathogen-blocking using wAlbB is robust under more frequent feeding conditions. 10/12
This trend held true for double-fed WT and wAlbB mosquitoes but further modeling showed that single-fed and double-fed wAlbB mosquitoes had a lower chance of surviving past the EIP relative to WT counterparts. 9/12
The increase in speed of dissemination with a second blood meal also led to a decrease in extrinsic incubation period (EIP) and a greater probability of surviving to transmit virus. 8/12
Further, DENV-2 titers were higher in double-fed WT and wAlbB mosquitoes but this was not linked to Wolbachia density and appeared to be connected to dissemination status. 7/12
This trend of earlier DENV-2 midgut escape held true for WT mosquitoes and those with wAlbB Wolbachia. Numbers of wMelM mosquitoes were too low to make any firm conclusions here. 6/12
We also found that DENV-2 escapes the mosquito midgut faster when mosquitoes are given a second blood meal. This more closely matches mosquito feeding patterns in the wild where mosquitoes attempt to refeed shortly after egg laying. 5/12
As expected, we found that both wAlbB and wMelM Wolbachia strains reduced DENV-2 infection in Aedes aegypti with wMelM providing more protection against initial midgut infection. 4/12
This study provides new insights into Wolbachia-based pathogen-blocking under more frequent mosquito blood feeding. Let's do a quick summary thread but check out the paper for more details! 3/12
These include Braiya Nolan, Afeez Sodeinde, @isabelott.bsky.social, @perran.bsky.social, Xinyue Gu, @nathangrubaugh.bsky.social, Alex Perkins, @brackneylab.bsky.social, and @chantalvogels.bsky.social 2/12
So glad to finally have this out with co-author @mallerybreban.bsky.social and very thankful for the many amazing people who contributed to this study and provided materials and input! 🦟🦠1/12 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Likewise thrilled to have been able to contribute to an amazing team effort on this! 🦟
Thrilled to be a part of this study on Wolbachia and multiple blood feeding. Now published!
rdcu.be/eyqaG
🦟" #Mosquito #immune cells enhance #dengue and #Zika virus infection in #Aedes aegypti" by David R. Hall, @entomososwin.bsky.social, @brackneylab.bsky.social, @vectorimmunity.bsky.social et al. in @natcomms.nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
This was such a fun study with great collaborators! Glad to have it finally out. 🎉 We found that hemocytes actually help viruses disseminate to new organs within the mosquito.
Despite all the shit going on, we have to celebrate our victories. New publication with @entomososwin.bsky.social and @vectorimmunity.bsky.social showing that hemocytes play a central role in disseminating flaviviruses to secondary tissues potentially functioning as a Trojan Horse(TBD)
rdcu.be/euj4g
New RasgonLab paper (ahead of print) published in Autophagy!
By Dr. Sujit Pujhari & other former RasgonLab members
"Sindbis virus is suppressed in the yellow fever mosquito Aedes aegypti by Atg6/BECN1 (autophagy-related 6)-mediated activation of autophagy"
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
🧪 Detailed data viz NYT article, out today, on the extent of funding cuts at the National Science Foundation.
This "broken pie chart" is neat & new to me: Powerfully shows the slowdown in new NSF awards across areas.
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
Blackpoll!!
No photo but saw my first one this morning!