Flaminia Catteruccia

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Flaminia Catteruccia
malariology, entomology

Flaminia Catteruccia is an Italian professor of immunology and infectious disease at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, studying the interactions between malaria and the Anopheles mosquitoes that transmit the parasites.

Early life and education

Catteruccia initially trained in chemistry for her undergraduate degree, however upon graduating she decided to venture into malaria biology with a research fellowship at the

transposon into the genome of the mosquitoes, which was inherited by progeny.[2][3]

Career

Catteruccia was awarded the MRC Career Development Award and Wellcome Trust Value in People Award in 2006.[4] She first set up her own independent research group at Imperial College London in 2007.[5]

Her lab is interested in the reproductive behaviours of mosquitoes, particularly Anopheles gambiae.[1] In 2009 she published research showing that the seminal plug deposited by the male mosquitoes in females after mating is essential for successful reproduction.[6] By knocking down a male enzyme involved in forming the plug (using RNAi), which led to unsuccessful reproductive attempts, her and colleagues demonstrated the necessity of the structure previously thought only to be involved in preventing competition from the sperm of other males.[7] Later her and Andrea Crisanti's teams made a successful gene knockdown in mosquitoes which rendered males completely sterile. Females didn't attempt to mate again after their first copulation with the sterile male, suggesting that the release of sterile males into the wild (as organisations such as Oxitec are currently doing) could have a major effect on mosquito populations.[8][9][10][11] After briefly moving to the University of Perugia, Catteruccia joined the faculty of Harvard as a professor in 2011 upon an invitation by Dyann Wirth.[2][5] Two years later, Catteruccia and colleagues investigated the role of a male hormone in stimulating female production of eggs; an unusual direct link between copulation and ovulation as opposed to the other way round.[12][13] Catteruccia is also involved in the design of gene drives to force malaria-resistance genes to spread through mosquito populations, using CRISPR gene editing.[14][15][16]

Photograph of Catteruccia standing in front of a screen showing one of her slides, which pictures a male and female mosquito coupled in mating, and under the words "we study sex to stop mosquitoes from reproducing"
Catteruccia as a 2012 PopTech Science fellow giving a talk on the reproductive biology of Anopheles mosquitoes

In 2016 Catteruccia was awarded a faculty scholarship by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Simons Foundation worth $1.2 million to continue her malaria research.[17]

In 2019 Catteruccia published research in

insecticide resistance in mosquitoes.[20][21][22][23][24][25] Although mosquitoes are unlikely to develop resistance, given that their survival rates appear to be unaffected by the drug in lab conditions, malaria may still develop resistance especially if the drug is implemented on a mass scale.[20][23]

Awards

2021 - Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator[26]

2016 - Faculty Scholar award - Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation[27][28]

2012 - PopTech Science Fellow[29]

2006 - MRC Career Development Award[4]

Selected publications

  • W. Robert Shaw, Flaminia Catteruccia. 2019. Vector biology meets disease control: using basic research to fight vector-borne diseases. Nat Microbiol; 4(1):20-34. doi:10.1038/s41564-018-0214-7.
  • Kristine Werling, W Robert Shaw, Maurice A Itoe, Kathleen A Westervelt, Perrine Marcenac, Douglas G Paton, Duo Peng, Naresh Singh, Andrea L Smidler, Adam South, Amy A Deik, Liliana Mancio-Silva, Allison R Demas, Sandra March, Eric Calvo, Sangeeta N Bhatia, Clary B Clish, Flaminia Catteruccia. 2019. Steroid Hormone Function Controls Non-competitive Plasmodium Development in Anopheles. Cell;177(2):315-325.e14. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2019.02.036.
  • Douglas G Paton, Lauren M Childs, Maurice A Itoe, Inga E Holmdahl, Caroline O Buckee, Flaminia Catteruccia. 2019. Exposing Anopheles mosquitoes to antimalarials blocks Plasmodium parasite transmission. Nature;567(7747):239-243. doi:10.1038/s41586-019-0973-1.
  • Chloe Greppi, Willem J Laursen, Gonzalo Budelli, Elaine C Chang, Abigail M Daniels, Lena van Giesen, Andrea L Smidler, Flaminia Catteruccia, Paul A Garrity. Mosquito heat seeking is driven by an ancestral cooling receptor. Science;367(6478):681-684. doi:10.1126/science.aay9847.
  • Flaminia Catteruccia. 2016. Flaminia Catteruccia – Digging into the Sex Life of Mosquitoes. Trends Parasitology; 32(10):751-752. doi:10.1016/j.pt.2016.05.012.
  • Flaminia Catteruccia. 2020. Malaria-carrying mosquitoes get a leg up on insecticides. Nature;577(7790):319-320. doi:10.1038/d41586-019-03728-5.

References

  1. ^
    PMID 27291358
    .
  2. ^ a b c "Mosquito maven". Harvard News. 2016-09-23. Retrieved 2019-05-05.
  3. S2CID 4425584
    .
  4. ^ a b "Flaminia Catteruccia". Flaminia Catteruccia. Retrieved 2019-05-05.
  5. ^ a b "Fighting malaria with spermless mosquitoes". Harvard News. 2011-12-08. Retrieved 2019-05-05.
  6. PMID 20027206
    .
  7. ^ "Meddling in mosquitoes' sex lives could help stop the spread of malaria, says study | Imperial News | Imperial College London". Imperial News. Retrieved 2019-05-05.
  8. ^ "Spermless mosquitoes could help halt malaria spread". Reuters. 2011-08-08. Retrieved 2019-05-05.
  9. ISSN 1476-4687
    .
  10. PMID 21825136
    .
  11. ^ "Spermless mosquitoes hold promise". 2011-08-08. Retrieved 2019-05-05.
  12. ^ Adetunji, Jo. "Controlling mosquito sex lives is one way to fight malaria". The Conversation. Retrieved 2019-05-05.
  13. PMID 24204210
    .
  14. ^ "Deploying mosquitoes against Zika". Harvard Gazette. 2016-03-28. Retrieved 2019-05-04.
  15. ^ Shaw, Jonathan (2016-04-15). "Editing an End to Malaria?". Harvard Magazine. Retrieved 2019-05-05.
  16. PMID 25035423
    .
  17. ^ "Flaminia Catteruccia wins prestigious Faculty Scholar award". News. 2016-09-23. Retrieved 2019-05-04.
  18. PMID 30814727
    .
  19. ISSN 0307-1235
    . Retrieved 2019-05-05.
  20. ^ a b c "Study finds potential new weapon in fight against malaria". SABC News - Breaking news, special reports, world, business, sport coverage of all South African current events. Africa's news leader. 2019-02-27. Retrieved 2019-05-05.
  21. ^ a b "Medicating mosquitoes to fight malaria: Applying antimalarial drugs to bed nets could lead to drop in malaria transmission". ScienceDaily. Retrieved 2019-05-05.
  22. ^ Lambert, Jonathan (27 February 2019). "Promising New Bed Net Strategy To Zap Malaria Parasite In Mosquitoes". NPR.org. Retrieved 2019-05-04.
  23. ^ a b Ye, Yvaine. "Malaria drugs for mosquitoes could help prevent the disease in humans". New Scientist. Retrieved 2019-05-05.
  24. ^ McMillan, Fiona. "Fighting Malaria With Drug-Treated Mosquito Nets". Forbes. Retrieved 2019-05-05.
  25. ^ "Una nuova strategia per combattere la malaria". Le Scienze (in Italian). Retrieved 2019-05-05.
  26. ^ "HHMI Invests $300 Million in 33 New Investigators". HHMI. Retrieved 2021-10-21.
  27. ^ "2016 Faculty Scholars". 2016 Faculty Scholars. Retrieved 2021-03-30.
  28. ^ "Flaminia Catteruccia wins prestigious Faculty Scholar award". News. 2016-09-23. Retrieved 2021-03-30.
  29. ^ "Meet the 2012 Science Fellows: Flaminia Catteruccia". PopTech. Archived from the original on 2016-08-12. Retrieved 2021-04-01.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Flaminia_Catteruccia&oldid=1209638939"