Christos (Kitsos) Louis
Following more than 20 years of "fly" work (mostly Drosophila and Ceratitis), the group has turned its attention to the study of another dipteran insect, the malaria vector Anopheles gambiae, as well as the parasite causing the disease, Plasmodium spp.
Over the last 15 years, our research has covered two broad areas: a) genomics and b) insect-parasite interactions. More details of the team's research can be found in the page on current projects, or the recent publications of the group.
Kitsos Louis is currently also serving as the acting Scientific Manager of the IMBB Genome Lab. This lab is a genome sequence facility using ABI377 machines. An RNA profiling set-up (Arrayer, Array Reader) has recently been added to the IGL.
The IGL was a member of the European Drosophila Genome Programme and the Anopheles genome project.
Kitsos Louis and the group participate in the BioMalPar a Network of Excellence, along with more than 40 other European laboratories.
Here, the emphasis of our group is on the study of the An. gambiae-Plasmodium interactions in the mosquito midgut.
Moreover, the MacArthur Foundation and the UNDP/World Bank/WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) supported the establishment and maintenance of AnoBase, an Anopheles gambiae database that is accessible through WWW browsers. Kitsos' group partcipates in the NIAID-funded VectorBase project that joins databases interested in the genome of insect disease vectors.