Journal of Medical Entomology (2008) 45, 129-132

Eva Veronesi, Peter P.C. Mertens, Andrew E. Shaw, Joe Brownlie, Philip S. Mellor and Simon T. Carpenter (2008)
Quantifying bluetongue virus in adult Culicoides biting midges (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae)
Journal of Medical Entomology 45 (1), 129-132
Abstract: A TissueLyser system (QIAGEN) was used to rapidly and accurately estimate bluetongue virus "loads" in individual adult Culicoides sonorensis Wirth and Jones (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae). The optimized homogenization program that was developed, involved shaking insects for 1 min at 25 Hz with 2- or 3-mm stainless steel ball bearings. This program was used to measure the quantities of bluetongue virus present in insects that had either been inoculated or had ingested a viremic bloodmeal through an artificial membrane. The virus titers obtained using either infection technique and the optimized program did not differ significantly from those obtained using a polypropylene motor-driven pestle, a method that is currently in common use for studies of vector competence). The advantages of the new method, as a rapid means of detecting fully disseminated infections in individual field-caught flies, are discussed. Its use is compared with the processing of pools of Culicoides by conventional methods, where the extent of dissemination of the virus is unknown and could wrongly implicate species that are of low importance in transmission.
(The abstract is excluded from the Creative Commons licence and has been copied with permission by the publisher.)
Link to article at publishers website
Database assignments for author(s): Eva Veronesi, Philip S. Mellor

Research topic(s) for pests/diseases/weeds:
general biology - morphology - evolution

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Pest and/or beneficial records:

Beneficial	Pest/Disease/Weed	Crop/Product	Country	Quarant.
	Culicoides sonorensis