Biological Sciences Colloquium: Dr. Ethan Degner

Dr. Ethan Degner of Wisconsin Lutheran College will present a talk about his work entitled, “Chronicling a mosquito’s sex life from intromission to oviposition.”

The abstract is as follows:

“Each year, mosquito-borne infections kill hundreds of thousands and sicken hundreds of millions more. Controlling populations of mosquitoes is a public health imperative, but despite decades of effort and technological advances, mosquitoes remain humanity’s number one killer. 

Manipulating mosquito reproduction offers a promising avenue by which mosquito populations may be controlled, but doing so requires an intimate understanding of mosquito reproduction, from mating to egg-laying and a host of events in between. In this seminar, I use the yellow fever mosquito Aedes aegypti to chronicle a mosquito’s reproductive life, highlighting the modifications that a mosquito’s sperm undergo prior to fertilization. I also present efforts to catalog the proteins and transcripts involved in these events. Proper sperm function within a female is a requirement for producing the next generation of pathogen-transmitting mosquitoes, and therefore understanding the molecular and cellular underpinnings that govern mosquito reproduction may allow new methods for mosquito control.”

The presentation will begin at 4:00 PM in Lapham Hall N101, preceded by an informal reception from 3:45 – 4:00 PM.