AgDscam Is Implicated in Anti- <i>Plasmodium</i> Defense

<div><p>RNAi-mediated depletion of AgDscam from adult female mosquitoes resulted in increased permissiveness to P. berghei infection, as indicated by a 59%–99% increase in oocysts numbers in four independent assays. </p> <p>The figure presents the frequency distributions of oocysts pooled from four independent assays where MI indicates mean intensity of infection (oocysts number) plus/minus standard error, and <i>n</i> indicates the total number of mosquitoes in each experiment. Infection levels in <i>AgDscam</i>-silenced mosquitoes were comparable to the positive control <i>Tep1 dsRNA</i>-treated mosquitoes [<a href="http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.0040229#pbio-0040229-b044" target="_blank">44</a>]. </p>