Table 1. RNAi-mediated silencing of AgOXT1 activity resulted in a partial reduction in salivary gland sporozoite infection intensity.

The number of sporozoites was determined for each salivary gland pair per mosquito from each treatment and control group from two biological experiments. Independent cohorts of A. gambiae mosquitoes were infected with P. falciparum (NF54) and then inoculated with dsGFP or dsAgOXT1 at day 9 and harvested at day 12 (corresponding to the 72 h time point following dsRNA delivery and the absence of HS biosynthesis; see the time line in Figure 3A and the Western blot in Figure 3C, lower panel). The raw data for the dsGFP control cohorts were analysed for equality of variance (F test, P=0.3049) to demonstrate that these two biological cohorts had similar parasite infection levels in terms of midgut oocysts at day 8 and salivary gland sporozoites at day 12. Statistical significance was determined by Mann–Whitney U test analysis of median sporozoite numbers for control and treatment groups (α=0.05).

	Group	n	Median number of sporozoites per salivary gland pair (range)	Inhibition (%)	Prevalence of infection	P value
Experiment 1	dsGFP	20	92000 (0–600000)	−	75%	−
	dsAgOXT1	20	38000 (0–250000)	59	65%	0.172
Experiment 2	dsGFP	19	83421 (0–210000)	−	68%	−
	dsAgOXT1	24	17917 (0–90000)	79	50%	0.016