Mosquito Microbiota and Metagenomics, and its Relevance to Disease Transmission

Application of high throughput sequencing to infer microbial diversity in environmental as well as animal and plant samples is the central theme of metagenomics. This is an immerging area of modern biology that has huge potential to uncover the forms of life we would have never imagined, for example the diversity of microorganisms living within a tiny insect. Metagenomics analyses of disease spreading insects will open up new avenues for better understanding the role of gut microbiota of insect vectors, such as mosquitoes, in ability of these vectors to spread deadly human diseases. The aim of this editorial is to provide the current state of our knowledge on identification of microbial communities in mosquitoes, but more importantly, to give a wakeup call to the vector biology community that it is time to take a good look on the guts of these disease-spreading insects