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<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Twenty-eight genes putatively encoding cytosolic glutathione transferases have been identified in the <it>Anopheles gambiae </it>genome. We manually annotated these genes and then confirmed the annotation by sequencing of <it>A. gambiae </it>cDNAs. Phylogenetic analysis with the 37 putative GST genes from <it>Drosophila </it>and representative GSTs from other taxa was undertaken to develop a nomenclature for insect GSTs. The epsilon class of insect GSTs has previously been implicated in conferring insecticide resistance in several insect species. We compared the expression level of all members of this GST class in two strains of <it>A. gambiae </it>to determine whether epsilon GST expression is correlated with insecticide resistance status.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Two <it>A. gambiae </it>GSTs are alternatively spliced resulting in a maximum number of 32 transcripts encoding cytosolic GSTs. We detected cDNAs for 31 of these in adult mosquitoes. There are at least six different classes of GSTs in insects but 20 of the <it>A. gambiae </it>GSTs belong to the two insect specific classes, delta and epsilon. Members of these two GST classes are clustered on chromosome arms 2L and 3R respectively. Two members of the GST supergene family are intronless. Amongst the remainder, there are 13 unique introns positions but within the epsilon and delta class, there is considerable conservation of intron positions. Five of the eight epsilon GSTs are overexpressed in a DDT resistant strain of <it>A. gambiae</it>.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The GST supergene family in <it>A. gambiae </it>is extensive and regulation of transcription of these genes is complex. Expression profiling of the epsilon class supports earlier predictions that this class is important in conferring insecticide resistance.</p>