Mahdieh Manafi - Ph.D. Candidate, Malaria and Vector Research Group (MVRG), Biotechnology Research Center (BRC), Pasteur Institute of Iran, Tehran, Iran
Abbasali Raz - Associate Professor, Malaria and Vector Research Group (MVRG), Biotechnology Research Center (BRC), Pasteur Institute of Iran, Tehran, Iran

Background: Vector-borne diseases like as malaria have been one of the most important world health problems from previous years. According to the recommended solutions, new control strategies are necessary to support and improve the current situation which has been acquired by using the insecticides and medications. Paratransgenesis, the genetic manipulation of insect symbiotic microorganisms, is considered as a potential method to control of this type of diseases. Asaia, a symbiont bacterium of Anopheles mosquitoes, is a potent candidate for achieving this purpose. This bacterium could be engineered to express and secrete the effector proteins or peptides. Therefore, characterization and identification of secretion systems of Asaia would be very helpful for paving the road.Objectives: This study was designed to analyze and evaluate the secretion systems of Asaia by using the bioinformatics approaches for providing the fundamental data for experimental experiments.Materials and Methods: The sequences of the whole proteins of Asaia species (including Bogorensis spp., Prunellae spp. and Platicody spp.) were downloaded from NCBI web server. Analysis of the presence of bacterial secretion systems (T1SS-T6SS) was done with online TXSSdb site. In the next step, components of the identified secretion systems were characterized by using the protein BLAST software.Results: Our results revealed that the all of the three mandatory components (ABC transporter protein, membrane fusion protein and outer membrane protein) of the type 1 secretion system (T1SS) are existed in Asaia spp.. With regard that these components are almost conserved among the bacteria, protein BLAST was used for alignment of the T1SS components of Escherichia coli (HlyA system) and whole protein sequences of Asaia spp.. The alignment results were consistent with the TXSSdb outputs.Conclusion: Since type one secretion system is able to secrete wide range of proteins in high titers and it is a simple secretion system (with only three components), exploitation of type one secretion system to secrete effector molecules by Asaia spp. against the Anopheles mosquitoes or malaria parasites (Plasmodium spp.) could be an efficient strategy to control malaria and it could be applied for other vector-borne diseases.

Malaria, Anopheles, Paratransgenesis, Asaia, Bacterial Secretion systems