My thesis involves lots of RNA-seq based gene expression from the midguts of three disease vector mosquitoes. The main aim is to see if certain gene expression regulatory patterns that are involved in the response to a bloodmeal might be conserved due the fact that bloodfeeding is believed to be ancestral to the mosquito linage. However, I have also written a couple python packages to aid in the project. The first is simply an automation tool for running the RNA-seq analyses and recording settings/intermediate data. The second is intended to facilitate the incorporation of multiple disparate genomic-scale data-types (orthology, phylogenetics, protein-domain annotations, etc) with the gene expression data in a network-graph-based data structure.
The major focus of my current lab is to produce genetically modified mosquitoes that do not transmit Malaria or Dengue Fever that will be able to spread this trait swiftly through local mosquito populations rendering the area protected from transmission. Since the midgut is the first mosquito tissue that comes in contact with the pathogens, having a better understanding of potential gene regulatory control mechanisms should aid in long term efforts to control the expression of anti-pathogen effector genes that we can engineer into the animals.