BAckground
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I grew up in Southeastern Wisconsin and completed my BS degree at the University of Wisconsin – Madison in Zoology and Entomology. While I was an undergraduate I started working in Dr. Susan Paskewitz’s lab exploring how a malaria refractory strain of Anopheles gambiae was able to recognize an object as foreign, while a susceptible strain could not. I continued this work as a MS student and we found that charge played an important role. Specifically, while positively charged and neutral Sephadex beads were both melanotically encapsulated when injected into either susceptible or refractory mosquitoes, only refractory mosquitoes could recognize negatively charged beads. Furthermore, when a negatively charged bead was incubated in the hemolymph of a susceptible mosquito and then transferred to a refractory mosquito, the bead could no longer be recognized as foreign.
Following the completion of my MS I moved to Athens, GA to join the lab of Dr. Mark Brown at the University of Georgia to work on my PhD. At UGA I focused on mosquito physiology and became interested in how signaling pathways, particularly the insulin signaling pathway, regulates diverse physiologies in mosquitoes. We characterized a number of insulin signaling molecules in Aedes aegypti and elucidated the role insulin signaling had in ovarian ecdysteroid production and thus reproduction. For my postdoctoral fellowship I joined the lab of Dr. Marcelo Jacobs-Lorena, first at Case Western Reserve University and then at Johns Hopkins University. There I learned to genetically engineer mosquitoes using the piggyBac transposable element. I also examined the feasibility of controlling malaria parasite infections in the mosquito using paratransgenesis, or genetically engineered bacteria expressing anti-microbial peptides in the mosquito gut. We demonstrated that linking the peptide SM1 to the outer membrane protein of an Enterobacter could significantly reduce Plasmodium infection when provisioned to the mosquitoes. |
Dr. Michael A Riehle
Department of Entomology University of Arizona Forbes 410 1140 E. South Campus Dr. Tucson, AZ, 85721-0036 Phone: 520-626-8500 Email: [email protected] Additional information on Michael Riehle Department Website : BIO5 Website Researchgate : Google Scholar : Loop 
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Joining the UNiversity of Arizona
I joined the University of Arizona in 2005 and returned to my PhD roots to continue studying cell signaling in mosquitoes. I leveraged what I had learned about transgenesis during my postdoc and began manipulating insulin signaling in both Aedes and Anopheles mosquitoes. In collaboration with Dr. Shirley Luckhart and Dr. Mark Brown, our labs have been able to uncover many of the intricacies of the insulin signaling pathway and how it regulates mosquito immunity, lifespan, metabolism and reproduction.
While at UA I have also had an opportunity to work with a wonderful group of researchers, including Drs. Kathleen Walker, Kacey Ernst, Dawn Gouge and Yves Carriere, to examine the ecology and vectorial capacity of Ae. aegypti in the Sonoran desert. We have examined the population age structure of mosquitoes in both Arizona and Sonora, MX to try to determine if adult survivorship plays a role in the ability of these mosquitoes to transmit Zika, dengue and Chikungunya viruses. This is particularly important at the edge of their environmental range here in Arizona, where hot and dry conditions may shorten the mosquito’s lifespan.
While at UA I have also had an opportunity to work with a wonderful group of researchers, including Drs. Kathleen Walker, Kacey Ernst, Dawn Gouge and Yves Carriere, to examine the ecology and vectorial capacity of Ae. aegypti in the Sonoran desert. We have examined the population age structure of mosquitoes in both Arizona and Sonora, MX to try to determine if adult survivorship plays a role in the ability of these mosquitoes to transmit Zika, dengue and Chikungunya viruses. This is particularly important at the edge of their environmental range here in Arizona, where hot and dry conditions may shorten the mosquito’s lifespan.
