Fig. 4.

Lytic activity in clean hearts of A. albimanus challenged with zymosan. Mosquitoes were injected with either 1 μl medium (RPMI) containing zymosan (100 μg glucose equivalents/ml; black squares) or 1 μl RPMI (black circles); non-injected control (white circles). After 2 h, clean hearts were obtained and lysed in potassium phosphate buffer. Clean heart extract (50 μl) from each group was incubated with 50 μl Microccocus lysodeikticus (360 μg/ml). The absorbance at 450 nm was recorded every 2 min. Each value represents the mean ± SD absorbance of three independent assays with ten clean hearts in each group. Decrease of absorbance indicates the amount of bacteria lysed