Cytochrome Oxidase-I Gene Sequencing Approaches to Identification of Culex pipiens Complex Collected in Baljurashi Province, Saudi Arabia

Some species of mosquitoes such as Culex pipiens complex are survive at different habitat conditions. They are considered of medically important vectors for some diseases, which causes a huge financial and medical problems to humans. From this point of view, species identification is the first step in the control of Culex pipiens complex. Previously identification of Culex pipiens complex is mainly done on the basis of a wide variety of morphological and biological characteristics. This can be difficult because diagnostic morphological features are often varied so little between species. So that in the present work, Culex species identification is performed by using DNA sequencing assay based on the mtDNA cytochrome oxidase-I (COX-I) gene. 56 mosquitoes specimens were collected from different infected areas in Baljurashi province, Al Baha, Saudi Arabia and grown for several generations in lab. COX-I gene amplification was carried out using the universal primers LCO1490 and HCO2198. Only 35 mosquito specimens had good amplified COXI target gene sequenced. These DNA sequences were compared with available sequences using basic alignment search tool in NCBI-Nucleotide database. Most of the examined specimens have high matching result in gene-bank with LC102132. However specimens T6, 8, 9, 15, 21, 45 & 51 have high similarity with JQ958371 Culex pipiens strain cf-3 and also specimen T35 has high similarity with KJ500032 Culex pipiens isolate 2AF. In conclusion, Sequence alignment and phylogenetic analysis of mitochondrial COX-I gene can be used as molecular tool for identification of Culex species