Physiological and immunological responses to Culicoides sonorensis blood-feeding: a murine model.

Background: Hematophagous Culicoides spp. biting midges are of great agricultural importance as livestock, equine, and wildlife pests and as vectors of the orbiviruses bluetongue, epizootic hemorrhagic disease and African horse sickness. To obtain a blood meal, midges deposit saliva containing allergens, proteases, and anti-hemostatic factors, into the dermis to facilitate feeding.

Effect of Culicoides sonorensis salivary proteins on clinical disease outcome in experimental bluetongue virus serotype 8 infection of Dorset sheep.

The severity of bluetongue clinical disease in ruminants varies greatly depending on the outbreak serotype/strain, animal species/breed, and immune status of the herd. To predict disease risk from any of the 26 bluetongue virus (BTV) serotypes identified to date, experimental animal susceptibility studies are often conducted. Although sheep are the most susceptible livestock species in the US, infection of domestic breeds by injection of field isolates rarely produces the level of clinical disease observed in natural Culicoides midge‑transmitted outbreaks.

The salivary secretome of the biting midge, Culicoides sonorensis.

Culicoides biting midges (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae) are hematophagous insects with over 1400 species distributed throughout the world. Many of these species are of particular agricultural importance as primary vectors of bluetongue and Schmallenberg viruses, yet little is known about Culicoides genomics and proteomics. Detailed studies of members from other blood-feeding Dipteran families, including those of mosquito (Culicidae) and black fly (Simuliidae), have shown that protein components within the insect's saliva facilitate the blood feeding process.

Autographa californica M nucleopolyhedrovirus open reading frame 109 affects infectious budded virus production and nucleocapsid envelopment in the nucleus of cells.

Autographa californica M nucleopolyhedrovirus (AcMNPV) open reading frame 109 (ac109) is conserved in all known baculovirus genomes, suggesting a crucial role in virus replication. Although viruses lacking ac109 have been previously characterized, the phenotypes differ from production of non-infectious virions to lack of virion production. To re-examine ac109 function, we constructed a recombinant AcMNPV bacmid, AcBAC109KO, with a deletion in ac109.

Virion-associated viral fibroblast growth factor stimulates cell motility.

The Autographa californica M nucleopolyhedrovirus (AcMNPV) viral fibroblast growth factor (vFGF) has functional parallels to cellular FGFs. Deletion of the AcMNPV vfgf has no obvious phenotype in cell culture but delays the time of insect death. Here, we determined vFGF production during virus infection.