Figure 2.

Anopheles gambiae Down syndrome cell adhesion molecule (AgDscam), a member of the Ig superfamily, generates semi-specific splice variants in response to various immune elicitors. In A. gambiae, immune elicitors such as Escherichia coli (yellow) and P. veronii (green) have been shown to lead to the generation of pathogen-specific splice variants (purple) of the germ line-encoded AgDscam. AgDscam (blue bar) contains four exons (black squares), which exhibit alternative splicing, capable of producing 31,920 different isoforms (represented in rows). When mosquitoes are exposed to various bacteria, the repertoire of AgDscam splice variants not only differ but also contain a majority of variants capable of binding to the bacteria (inside red square) to which the insect is exposed.