Morphological and Molecular Study of the Male mosquito of Aedes aegypti Linnaeus, 1762 (Diptera - Culicidae) in Aleppo – Syria

Abstract

: The mosquito Aedes aegypti is the most important medical insects because it is a vector of many diseases such as dengue fever , yellow fever and Rift Valley fever which cause serious health problems. These fevers may be terminated by the death of the patients. This research focusses on the morphological and molecular study of this insect. In this research, PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) and identifying nucleotide sequence were used for the morphological classification of Aedes aegypti , and determine its type genetic (DNA). The collected insect specimens were morphologicaly celly classified using taxonomic keys, The DNA was extracted from insect male, PCR performed with the MT-ND4 Mitochondrial gene that encodes enzyme NADH dehydrogenase 4 using specific primers (ND4+ and ND4-). After MT-ND4 Mitochondrial gen was amplified, electrophoretic PCR products showed the length of fragment MT-ND4 Mitochondrial gene that amplified was 381 bp. Then the nucleotide sequence was indentified for the pogment of DNA from the gene MT-ND4 amplified by PCR and compared it with the nucleotide sequences of this gen in the gene bank. Therefore we have obtained the morphological classification of the aedes aegypti at the molecular level