Figure 5

Effect of manipulation of miR-34 abundance on mosquito fecundity. One-day-old female Ae. aegypti mosquitoes were injected with miR-34 mimic, negative control (NC) mimic, miR-34 inhibitor, or NC inhibitor. Three days after the injection, the females were fed blood, and then allowed to lay eggs. (A) RT-qPCR of RNA extracted from mosquitoes three days after injection to confirm increases or decreases in the abundance of miR-34 following injection of miR-34 mimic and inhibitor, respectively. T-test was used to compare the paired samples. p < 0.01. (B) Number of eggs laid per female in the treatments. In a separate experiment, mosquitoes were injected with buffer (APS), inhibitor NC, or miR-34 inhibitor and the number of (C) eggs per female, (D) larvae per female, and (E) larval hatch rate were recorded. One-way ANOVA was used to compare the treatments. ns, not significant. The error bars in all the graphs represent standard error of mean (SEM) of biological replicates each represented by a data point.