Fig. 8

Expression of cat flea candidate protective antigens. Representative images of midguts from unfed (stained with methylene blue) and fed cat fleas from the laboratory colony maintained at the LLC ACRO Vet Lab (Kyiv region, Ukraine) and used in this study. Total RNA was extracted from midguts dissected from unfed and fed cat flea and used for RT-PCR suing gene-specific oligonucleotide primers. The mRNA levels were normalized against cat flea 18S rRNA, presented as average + SD, and normalized Ct values were compared between unfed and fed fleas by Student's t-test with unequal variance (*P < 0.05; n = 3 biological replicates)