Fig. 4: Fitness comparison of DK-4M and FSS-4M against wild-type ZIKV strains during a mosquito–host–mosquito transmission cycle.

a Schematic representation of the study design. 10 pfu of ZIKV WT and mutant viruses were intrathoracically injected into mosquitoes. After 6 days of extrinsic incubation, the infected mosquitoes fed on a A129 mice to transmit virus. Naive mosquitoes were then employed to bite the infected A129 mice 3 days post-mouse infection. After an additional 14 days, the mosquitoes were harvested. All the mosquitoes and mice samples collected during the transmission cycle were analyzed by RT-PCR and Sanger sequencing. Each point represents a single mosquito or mouse sample. Figure adapted from Fig. 1a in Ref. ¹⁴. b, c Fitness comparison of DK-4M (b) and FSS-4M (c) against wild-type viruses in mosquito salivary glands 6 days post-intrathoracic injection. d, e Fitness of DK-4M (d) and FSS-4M (e) versus wild-type viruses in mouse blood. f, g The fitness comparison of DK-4M (f) and FSS-4M (g) versus wild-type viruses in mosquitoes after oral infection from viremic mice. b-g The distribution of the model-adjusted means is illustrated by catseye plots with shaded ± standard error (SE) overlaid by scatterplots of individual measures, which are shown on the log (base-10) scale such that comparisons are against a null value of 1. P values are calculated for the group (strain) coefficient for each linear regression model. n numbers represent the biologically independent samples and shown on the top of each figure. Source data are provided as a Source Data file. b, c The results were pooled from 4 independent repeats. d, e The results were collected from a single experiment. f, g The results were pooled from 3 independent repeats.