Methylation of actin II is required for oocyst development.

(a) Exflagellation of actIIH73Q was comparable to WT. Exflagellation tests were carried out three times for the WT and eleven times for the mutant. Error bar denotes SEM. Differences are not significant (Student’s t-test). (b) Ookinete conversion of the mutant compared to WT determined as the percentage of zygotes that developed into ookinetes. Error bar denotes SEM. Differences are not significant (Student’s t-test). (c) Number of oocysts/midguts from mosquitoes fed with WT or the actIIH73Q mutant. Two independent experiments are shown, number of midguts (n) in each experiment are shown below the graph. The number of oocysts was determined after staining the dissected midguts with the antibody against the Cap380 protein of the oocysts. All labeled oocysts were counted irrespective of size. There was no significant difference comparing WT to mutant, Mann-Whitney test. (d) Area in μm2 of WT and actIIH73Q oocysts. The area of 106 WT and 180 mutant oocysts from the experiment in (c) were measured in Image J. Differences are statistically significant p(e) Representative oocysts of WT and actIIH73Q mutant. Oocysts were labeled with Cap380 and DNA stained with Hoechst 33342. Raw data related to panels a-d can be found in S2 Data.