TY  - JOUR
T1  - Reprogramming Mosquito-Associated Microbiota to Interrupt Pathogen Transmission: A Scoping Review of Wolbachia, Paratransgenesis, Metabolites, and Synthetic Communities
A1  - James Walker
A1  - Olivia Harris
A1  - George Wilson
A1  - Yuki Sato
A1  - Chinedu Okafor
JF  - Entomology and Applied Science Letters
JO  - Entomol Appl Sci Lett
SN  - 2349-2864
Y1  - 2026
VL  - 13
IS  - 1
DO  - 10.51847/3i8zUK6ii8
SP  - 24
EP  - 35
N2  - Mosquito-associated microorganisms can alter host development, immunity, reproduction, survival, pathogen susceptibility, and other components of vectorial capacity, creating opportunities to interrupt pathogen transmission through deliberate microbiome manipulation. Translation remains constrained, however, because microbial detection or colonization is frequently treated as evidence of stable function, while reductions in pathogen abundance within individual mosquitoes are sometimes interpreted as population-level transmission control. This scoping review maps and critically compares recent evidence on Wolbachia-based transmission blocking, paratransgenesis, engineered symbionts, microbial metabolites, immune modulation, synthetic communities, persistence, evolutionary stability, and biosafety. Peer-reviewed evidence was identified through structured bibliographic searching, citation chaining, and verification of article metadata and journal eligibility. Studies were charted according to mosquito host, microbial component, anatomical compartment, intervention, transmission route, persistence, causal-validation method, pathogen outcome, biological scale, contextual modifiers, and ecological or safety boundary. The strongest evidence supports the capacity of selected Wolbachia strains to reduce arbovirus transmission and, under defined deployment conditions, lower human dengue incidence. Paratransgenic bacteria can deliver antipathogen effectors and can be engineered for conditional or self-limiting expression, but field-relevant persistence, competition with resident microbiota, genetic stability, containment, and effects on non-target organisms remain incompletely resolved. Evidence for metabolites, immune pathways, and community engineering is mechanistically promising but uneven across mosquito species, microbial taxa, pathogens, and environmental settings. The synthesis therefore supports a staged evaluation logic linking colonization, functional causality, transmission blocking, ecological stability, and epidemiological effect rather than treating these outcomes as interchangeable. Future development should combine causal microbial ecology with longitudinal field validation, evolutionary testing, environmental risk assessment, and governance proportionate to the transmissibility and persistence of each intervention.
UR  - https://easletters.com/article/reprogramming-mosquito-associated-microbiota-to-interrupt-pathogen-transmission-a-scoping-review-of-kujcn1xfbvspohd
ER  -