Figure 1

Effect of mosquito akr gene knockdown. Mosquitoes (N = 3 experiments of 200 mosquitoes each) were injected with dsRNA and fed 4 days later on P. berghei–infected mice. Surviving mosquitoes were counted and dissected to collect midguts 8 days after feeding (day 12 post-injection) to determine infection intensity (median number of parasite oocyst per infected mosquito), infection rate (100 × [number of infected mosquitoes/total number of mosquitoes analyzed]), number of parasite oocyst in mosquito midguts, number of eggs in the ovaries and the number of surviving mosquitoes. (A) Surviving mosquitoes. (B) Number of eggs per ovary. (C) Number of oocyst per midgut. (D) Representative fluorescence images of parasite oocyst in mosquito midguts. (E) Representative results for infection intensity. (F) Representative results for infection rate. Similar results were obtained in all replicates (N = 3). The number of parasite oocyst/midgut and eggs/ovary and the number of surviving mosquitoes (Ave ± SD) were compared between akr dsRNA-injected and control mosquitoes injected with unrelated B2m dsRNA by a two-sample comparison using the non-parametric Mann–Whitney test (*P < 0.0001).