Malaria Journal BioMed Central Research Open Access Assessing the molecular divergence between Anopheles (Kerteszia) cruzii populations from Brazil using the timeless gene: further evidence of a species complex Luísa DP Rona1, Carlos J Carvalho-Pinto2, Carla Gentile1,3, Edmundo C Grisard2 and Alexandre A Peixoto*1 Address: 1Laboratório de Biologia Molecular de Insetos, Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, FIOCRUZ, Av. Brasil 4365, Rio de Janeiro 21045-900, RJ, Brazil, 2Departamento de Microbiologia e Parasitologia, CCB, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis 88040-970, SC, Brazil and 3School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, 327 Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS, UK Email: Luísa DP Rona -
[email protected]; Carlos J Carvalho-Pinto -
[email protected]; Carla Gentile -
[email protected]; Edmundo C Grisard -
[email protected]; Alexandre A Peixoto* -
[email protected] * Corresponding author Published: 9 April 2009 Received: 24 November 2008 Accepted: 9 April 2009 Malaria Journal 2009, 8:60 doi:10.1186/1475-2875-8-60 This article is available from: http://www.malariajournal.com/content/8/1/60 © 2009 Rona et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: Anopheles (Kerteszia) cruzii was the most important vector of human malaria in southern Brazil between 1930–1960. Nowadays it is still considered an important Plasmodium spp. vector in southern and south-eastern Brazil, incriminated for oligosymptomatic malaria.