资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

Pyrethroid-impregnated bed nets have driven considerable reductions in malaria-associated morbidity and mortality in Africa since the beginning of the century(1). The intense selection pressure exerted by bed nets has precipitated widespread and escalating resistance to pyrethroids in African Anopheles populations, threatening to reverse the gains that been made by malaria control(2). Here we show that expression of a sensory appendage protein (SAP2), which is enriched in the legs, confers pyrethroid resistance to Anopheles gambiae. Expression of SAP2 is increased in insecticide-resistant populations and is further induced after the mosquito comes into contact with pyrethroids. SAP2 silencing fully restores mortality of the mosquitoes, whereas SAP2 overexpression results in increased resistance, probably owing to high-affinity binding of SAP2 to pyrethroid insecticides. Mining of genome sequence data reveals a selective sweep near the SAP2 locus in the mosquito populations of three West African countries (Cameroon, Guinea and Burkina Faso) with the observed increase in haplotype-associated single-nucleotide polymorphisms mirroring the increasing resistance of mosquitoes to pyrethroids reported in Burkina Faso. Our study identifies a previously undescribed mechanism of insecticide resistance that is likely to be highly relevant to malaria control efforts.

Observations show robust near-surface trends in Southern Hemisphere tropospheric circulation towards the end of the twentieth century, including a poleward shift in the mid-latitude jet(1,2), a positive trend in the Southern Annular Mode(1,3-6) and an expansion of the Hadley cell(7,8). It has been established that these trends were driven by ozone depletion in the Antarctic stratosphere due to emissions of ozone-depleting substances(9-11). Here we show that these widely reported circulation trends paused, or slightly reversed, around the year 2000. Using a pattern-based detection and attribution analysis of atmospheric zonal wind, we show that the pause in circulation trends is forced by human activities, and has not occurred owing only to internal or natural variability of the climate system. Furthermore, we demonstrate that stratospheric ozone recovery, resulting from the Montreal Protocol, is the key driver of the pause. Because pre-2000 circulation trends have affected precipitation(12-14), and potentially ocean circulation and salinity(15-17), we anticipate that a pause in these trends will have wider impacts on the Earth system. Signatures of the effects of the Montreal Protocol and the associated stratospheric ozone recovery might therefore manifest, or have already manifested, in other aspects of the Earth system.