Warmth shifts rather than speeds transcriptomic ageing in the malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Only older mosquitoes transmit malaria, so how warming changes mosquito ageing matters for disease. Warmer temperatures are known to make mosquitoes age faster, but “faster” can mean two different things: the ageing clock ticks more quickly, or it is simply set forward. We distinguished these by reanalysing 115 whole-body RNA-sequencing libraries from female Anopheles gambiae kept at 27, 30 or 32 °C and sampled 1–15 days after emergence. A transcriptomic clock trained on 27 °C mosquitoes (error ± 0.9 days) read 32 °C mosquitoes as 2.4 days older (95% CI 1.9–2.9) and 30 °C mosquitoes as 1.1 days older. The gap opened by day 5 and then stopped growing: between days 5 and 15, warmth added 0.01 extra days per day (95% CI − 0.16 to 0.19), well below the 0.29–0.45 expected if the clock ran faster. Genome-wide, warmth advanced genes that change late in life, notably melanisation and digestive genes, but moved early-maturation genes the opposite way. Many responses bent at 30 °C, and immune genes held until 30 °C before falling. Warmth therefore shifts mosquitoes to an older transcriptional state without accelerating its pace.
Institutions: Visva-Bharati University, Maulana Azad College, Jain University
Language: English
Subfield: Aging
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7211865443