A Physical Map for an Asian Malaria Mosquito, Anopheles stephensi

In this study, we report a 0.6-Mb-resolution physical map for Anopheles stephensi, an important vector of Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium falciparum in the Indo-Pakistan sub- continent and Middle-East. The map consists of 422 BAC clones and cDNA clones hybridized to 379 chromosomal sites. This makes An. stephensi only second to An. gambiae in density of a physical map among malaria mosquitoes. The basic local alignment search tool (BLAST) of the mapped DNA markers against the An. gambiae genome identified species-specific and conserved sequences . The comparative analysis of chromosomal location of the markers with the An. gambiae genome found inversion breakpoints and possi- ble gene duplications with no indication of interchromosomal transpositions. Abstract. Physical mapping is a useful approach for studying genome organization and evolution as well as for genome sequence assembly. The availability of polytene chromosomes in malaria mosquitoes provides a unique opportunity to develop high-resolution physical maps. We report a 0.6-Mb-resolution physical map consisting of 422 DNA markers hybridized to 379 chromosomal sites of the Anopheles stephensi polytene chromosomes. This makes An. stephensi sec- ond only to Anopheles gambiae in density of a physical map among malaria mosquitoes. Three hundred sixty-three (363) probes hybridized to single chromosomal sites, whereas 59 clones yielded multiple signals. This physical map provided a suitable basis for comparative genomics, which was used for determining inversion breakpoints, duplications, and origin of novel genes across species.