APL1 protects <i>A. gambiae</i> against wild <i>P. falciparum</i>.

A) Expression of the APL1 gene family detected by RT-PCR using primers that amplify a conserved region shared by all three APL1 genes. Mosquitoes were injected with a dsRNA directed against the shared region to simultaneously silence the three APL1 paralogs (dswAPL1), or with an irrelevant control dsRNA (dsLacz). In this and subsequent figures, the injected dsRNA is indicated above the gel columns and the transcript detected by RT-PCR is indicated to the right of the relevant gel row. Decreased signal in row wAPL1 indicates that dswAPL1 efficiently silences the entire APL1 family as compared to dsLacZ-injected controls. Detection of mRNA for ribosomal protein S7 (rpS7) was used as an internal reference. B) Silencing of the APL1 gene family permits significantly higher infection prevalence in mosquitoes fed on wild P. falciparum gametocytes from the natural population in Cameroon. There was no detectable effect of dswAPL1 on parasite intensity. Infection prevalence effects are depicted by pie charts rather than histograms of parasite number because the significant difference is between infected or uninfected states, not parasite intensity (n, number of dissected mosquitoes; statistical descriptions of infections are presented in Supplementary Tables S2 and S3).