There were fewer thiolester-containing proteins (TEPs) in the bee genome (four) than expected based on flies ( Table 1 ). The Anopheles genome encodes 15 TEPs, most of them originating from species-specific expansion (Christophides et al., 2004) versus six members of this gene family in Drosophila (Agaisse & Perrimon, 2004) . TEPs are induced after septic injury and promote phagocytosis in mosquitoes (Blandin & Levashina, 2004; Moita et al., 2005) . They also play a central role in vertebrate innate immunity as the complement factors. In Anopheles, TEP1 was found to promote phagocytosis of Gram-negative bacteria and is also a major player in the host response to plasmodium infection. Members of this group are implicated as both recognition proteins and effectors (opsonins) in insects (Levashina et al., 2001; Moita et al., 2005; Stroschein-Stevenson et al., 2006) .