GELIFES Seminars - Felix Hol

Link to seminar

Felix Hol (Radboud UMC)

Smelling blood

Deep behavioral phenotyping reveals how mosquito-pathogen interactions shape transmission

Female mosquitoes obtain a blood meal necessary for reproduction through a fascinating behavioral trajectory that culminates in the mosquito bite. The transmission of a variety of pathogens is an unfortunate by-product of this behavior. A successful blood meal is contingent on the mosquito's integration of environmental stimuli and its physiological state. Pathogens infecting a mosquito impact mosquito physiology and may alter its sensory cue integration, presenting the opportunity for the pathogen to influence its transmission by affecting the blood-feeding behavior of its vector. Using custom-built high-throughput behavioral assays, we explore this hypothesis in several mosquito species infected with the malaria parasite or dengue virus. We characterize activity patterns of free-flying mosquitoes from ingestion of the infectious blood meal to subsequent pathogen transmission and observe infection-associated changes in activity patterns and flight behavior. To dissect the impact of infection on biting dynamics, we combine the biteOscope—a transparent skin mimic allowing direct quantification of mosquito biting behavior—and deep learning-based image analysis to obtain detailed behavior statistics of >2500 blood-feeding mosquitoes. Comparative statistical analysis of the obtained datasets reveals the impact pathogens have on the blood-feeding behavior of mosquitoes. Pathogen-induced behavioral changes are subtle in both nature and magnitude, yet an epidemiological toy-model suggests that the observed changes are likely to impact pathogen transmission.

Biosketch:
Felix Hol received an MSc. in 'Physics of life' from VU Amsterdam, and a PhD in Biophysics from Delft University of Technology (the Netherlands) using microfabrication to study spatial aspects of bacterial cooperation, colonization, and competition. Next, he changed his focus from bacteria to mosquitoes and moved to Stanford University to work on several problems related to mosquito ecology and viral evolution. In 2019, he moved to Paris as a Marie Curie fellow and later a CNRS permanent researcher at Institut Pasteur, and a long-term fellow leading a research team at the Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity. Supported by a Hypatia fellowship and an NWO Vidi grant he joined the Radboud University Medical Center in the fall of 2022 to set up a vector biology research group. At Radboudumc Felix develops new technologies to study mosquito and pathogen biology and leverage these tools to understand the internal and external drivers of mosquito behaviors relevant to pathogen transmission.