Female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes infect more than 400 million people each year with dangerous viral pathogens including dengue, yellow fever, Zika and chikungunya. Progress in understanding the biology of mosquitoes and developing the tools to fight them has been slowed by the lack of a high-quality genome assembly. Here we combine diverse technologies to produce the markedly improved, fully re-annotated AaegL5 genome assembly, and demonstrate how it accelerates mosquito science. We anchored physical and cytogenetic maps, doubled the number of known chemosensory ionotropic receptors that guide mosquitoes to human hosts and egg-laying sites, provided further insight into the size and composition of the sex-determining M locus, and revealed copy-number variation among glutathione S-transferase genes that are important for insecticide resistance. Using high-resolution quantitative trait locus and population genomic analyses, we mapped new candidates for dengue vector competence and insecticide resistance. AaegL5 will catalyse new biological insights and intervention strategies to fight this deadly disease vector.

Summary The RNA-binding proteins Rbfox1/2/3 regulate alternative splicing in the nervous system, and disruption of Rbfox1 has been implicated in autism. However, comprehensive identification of functional Rbfox targets has been challenging. Here we performed HITS-CLIP for all three Rbfox family members to globally map, at a single-nucleotide resolution, their in vivo RNA interaction sites in the mouse brain. We found that the two guanines in the Rbfox-binding motif UGCAUG are critical for protein-RNA interactions and crosslinking. Using integrative modeling, these interaction sites combined with additional datasets defined 1,059 direct Rbfox target alternative splicing events. Over half of the quantifiable targets show dynamic changes during brain development. Of particular interest are 111 events from 48 candidate autism-susceptibility genes, including syndromic autism genes Shank3, Cacna1c, and Tsc2. Alteration of Rbfox targets in some autistic brains is correlated with down-regulation of all three Rbfox proteins, supporting the potential clinical relevance of the splicing- regulatory network.

Summary The paraneoplastic neurologic disorders target several families of neuron-specific RNA binding proteins (RNABPs), revealing that there are unique aspects of gene expression regulation in the mammalian brain. Here we used HITS-CLIP to determine robust binding sites targeted by the neuronal Elav-like (nElavl) RNABPs. Surprisingly, nElav protein bind preferentially to GU-rich sequences in vivo and in vitro, with secondary binding to AU-rich sequences. nElavl-null mice were used to validate the consequence of these binding events in the brain, demonstrating that they bind intronic sequences in a position dependent manner to regulate alternative splicing and to 3’UTR sequences to regulate mRNA levels. These controls converge on the glutamate synthesis pathway in neurons; nElavl proteins are required to maintain neurotransmitter glutamate levels, and the lack of nElavl leads to spontaneous epileptic seizure activity. The genome-wide analysis of nElavl targets reveals that one function of neuron-specific RNABPs is to control excitation-inhibition balance in the brain.