Fig. 5: Infection with KIAP null mutants causes reduced physiological damage to the sand fly.

a Bright field images extracted from movies of dissected sand fly guts infected with parental, or KIAP1 KO and AB L. mexicana parasites before and after midgut disruption on day 8 PBM. The temporal-colour-coded cell tracks were generated from the movies (Supplementary Movies 5–7; see Methods) capturing five seconds of the L. mexicana cell motility within the midgut or around the midgut and PSG after midgut disruption. Regions highlighted in colour or white indicate tracks of Leishmania motility. Note that the midguts infected with the parental and the KIAP1 AB cells are more swollen and wider than that infected with the KIAP1 KO cells. The locations of the stomodeal valve and promastigote secretary gel are shown with SV and PSG, respectively. The yellow dotted line shows the outline of the midgut. Representative movies of n = 2 independent infections. b Quantification of width of dissected midguts non-infected or infected with parental, or KIAP1, KIAP2 or KIAP3 KO and AB L. mexicana parasites on day 9 PBM. The width of the widest part under the stomodeal valve was measured. Data represent mean ± SEM (n = 6 individually infected midguts). The blue dots represent each measurement. P-values were calculated using two-tailed Welch’s t-test, which are shown above the graph. Source data are provided as a Source Data file. c Bright field and fluorescence images of dissected and calcofluor-stained midguts non-infected or infected with parental, or KIAP1, KIAP2 or KIAP3 KO and AB L. mexicana parasites on day 7 PBM. The arrow points to the region of low calcofluor signal. The locations of the stomodeal valve and crop are shown with SV and Cr, respectively. Representative images of at least n = 10 infected midguts.