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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2013 Sep 1.
Published in final edited form as: J Insect Physiol. 2012 Jun 12;58(9):1192–1201. doi: 10.1016/j.jinsphys.2012.06.002

Figure 2. Antimicrobial peptide gene expression in mated females relative to virgins during the course of infection.

Figure 2

Mated and virgin Canton S females were infected 2.5 hours after mating with a 1.0 A600 culture of P. rettgeri. Bacterial load was measured at 4, 12 and 24 hours after infection in independent experiments. Bacterial loads in mated females did not significantly differ from virgin females at 4 hours post infection (p = 0.9540) but did at 12 hours (p = 0.0003) and 24 hours post infection (p = 0.0002, data taken from Figure 1A). Each data point is a pool of three females, and the number of data points per treatment are as follows: at 4 hours, nmated = 23 and nvirgin = 24, at 12 hours, nmated = 23 and nvirgin = 27, and at 24 hours, nmated = 22 and nvirgin = 22. Flies given a sterile wound always yielded zero colonies (data not shown). AMP gene expression was assayed in a subsequent experiment at 0, 4, 12 and 24 hours after infection. Gene expression increased significantly over the course of infection in both virgin and mated females, but because the effect of mating status varied by time point, data were sorted by time and least squares means for each mating status/AMP gene combination were found by a mixed-model ANOVA. P-values reported on gene expression graphs are from these models and indicate the effect of mating status on overall AMP gene expression. Data are presented as the Log2 fold difference in mated female LS means relative to virgin control LS means for each gene, where a bar above or below the virgin level of expression represents a higher or lower level of expression due to mating, respectively. Because the differences are Log2, an increase of “1” corresponds to 2x the virgin level of gene expression at that time point, and a decrease of “1” corresponds to half the virgin level. Sample sizes are as follows: 0 hours, nmated = 6, nvirgin = 6, 4 hours, nmated = 8, nvirgin = 8, 12 hours, nmated = 8, nvirgin = 8, 24 hours, nmated = 8, nvirgin = 8, where each sample consists of a pool of 9–10 females collected over two replicate experiments.