Fig. 6: Effect of AgApyrase on P. berghei transmission.

a AgApyrase facilitates P. berghei infection of mosquito midguts. Oocyst numbers from midguts of An. gambiae mosquitoes that fed on a P. berghei infected mouse before or after the intravenous injection of native or heat-denatured rAgApyrase. Data pooled from three individual experiments shown in Fig. S10, and groups were compared with two-tailed t-test followed by Two-tailed Mann-Whitney comparison test. n = 168, 158, 105 and 117 midguts for before and after in native and denatured, respectively. Red lines indicate median. ****P < 0.0001; *P = 0.0456. b, c AgApyrase immunization inhibits P. berghei midgut infection. Oocyst numbers (b) and infection prevalence (c) were determined in the midguts of An. gambiae mosquitoes fed on P. berghei infected BALB/c mice previously immunized with rAgApyrase using Magic Mouse adjuvant or with adjuvant alone as control. Each dot represents median oocyst number (b) or prevalence (c) from mosquitoes fed on one mouse. n = 10 mice per group. Groups were compared with two-tailed t-test followed by two-tailed Mann-Whitney comparison test. Red lines indicate median. ****P < 0.0001. The oocysts numbers from mosquitoes feeding on each individual mouse are shown on Fig. S11. d, e AgApyrase immunization inhibits sporozoite transmission. BALB/c mice immunized with rAgApyrase in Magic Mouse adjuvant or adjuvant alone (control) were challenged with the bite of five An. stephensi mosquitoes infected with P. berghei sporozoites expressing the luciferase gene. Sporozoite infectivity was determined by measuring luciferase activity in the mouse liver 42 h post challenge. Luminescence signal in the mice livers is shown in panel (d) and the quantification in panel (e). Data pooled from two independent experiments and groups were compared with two-tailed t-test followed by two-tailed Mann–Whitney comparison test. n = 10 and 14 mice for control and AgApyr-imm, respectively. Red lines indicate median. ***P = 0.0002. f, g Similar experiment as in (d, e), but mice were challenged with 5000 sporozoites injected intravenously. Data from a single experiment, n = 5 mice per group. Two-tailed Mann-Whitney comparison test. Source Data are provided as a Source Data file. Figure 6d and f were created with BioRender.com released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license.