Figure 9. Effect of PTP inhibitors and silencing action of the AAEL001919 gene on egg formation in Aedes aegypti.

(A) Five- and seven-day old females were artificially fed with rabbit blood supplemented with the PTP inhibitor vanadate or the PTP substrate Difmup. Following a blood meal, fat bodies were dissected from females at the indicated times, and the expression of Vg mRNA was measured by qPCR and normalized against Rp49 gene expression. (B) Females from the experiments shown in A were placed in individual tubes, and the eggs laid were quantified on subsequent days after the blood meal. (C) One- and two-day old females (5 insects) were injected with either 140 ng of AAEL001919 RNAi or dsMal. AAEL001919 expression levels were quantified three days after RNAi injection as shown. (D) Injected mosquitoes from the experiment shown in panel C were naturally blood-fed three days later, and the number of eggs laid following the blood meal was quantified. Normalized data from four experiments were analyzed by One-way ANOVA (panels A and B) and Student's t-test (Panel D) with significance levels set at p<0.05. Groups assigned with the same letter (a, b or c) indicate that they do not show statistically significant difference among them. Different letters in different groups indicate that such groups show significant differences among themselves (Panels A and B). Asterisks indicate (Panel B) indicate a significant difference among groups (student T- test, p<0.05).