Fig. 7

Late-phase serine protease gene expression, midgut trypsin-like activity and ovary ecdysteroid production by Ae. aegypti after feeding on blood, BSA or BSA-derived products. a rqRT-PCR analysis of Aa5G1, AaLT, AaSPVI and AaSPVII expression in midguts 24 h after feeding to repletion on rat blood, BSA, BSA-derived peptides or amino acids that mimic abundance in BSA. Mean relative transcript abundance ± SD for each treatment is normalized to the actin gene. Each treatment was replicated four times using midgut samples prepared from different females. Small case letters indicate treatments significantly differed from one another after ANOVA and a post-hoc Tukey-Kramer multiple comparison test (p≤0.05). b Trypsin-like activity 24 h after the same treatments listed in (a). Non-fed females served as the negative control. Horizontal bars indicate the mean ± SD. Small case letters indicate treatments significantly differed from one another after ANOVA and a post-hoc Tukey-Kramer multiple comparison test (p ≤ 0.05). c Ecdysteroids produced per ovary pair ± SD from females that fed to repletion on the same treatments as in (a). Ovaries were collected from females at 24 h post-feeding and ecdysteroid amounts determined by EIA after a 6 h incubation in saline. A minimum of ten independent samples were prepared per treatment with different letters indicating significant differences after ANOVA and a post-hoc Tukey-Kramer multiple comparison test (p ≤ 0.05)