Ricerc@Sapienza

Hematophagous arthropods during feeding inject into their hosts a cocktail of salivary proteins whose main role is to allow for an effective blood meal by counteracting host hemostasis, inflammation and immunity. However, saliva of blood feeders also evokes in vertebrates an antibody response that can be used to evaluate exposure to disease vectors. Salivary transcriptome studies carried out in different hematophagous species in the last fifteen years clarified the complexity of the salivary repertoires of blood feeding arthropods, pointing out that salivary proteins evolve at a fast evolutionary rate and highlighting the existence of family-, genus- and sometime even species-specific salivary proteins. Focusing on mosquitoes of the genera Anopheles and Aedes, which are important vectors of the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum and of several arboviruses, we summarize here recent efforts to exploit genus-specific salivary proteins as biomarkers of human exposure to these vectors of large relevance for public health.