Transcriptome of the Aedes aegypti mosquito in response to human complement proteins

We previously showed that active human complement (hC5a) in the mosquito reduces dengue replication, induces expression of immunity transcripts, and interacts with midgut proteins. To further characterize the effect of human complement on mosquitos, we performed in vivo assays in which live mosquitoes were feed human blood containing either heat-inactivated (IB), normal serum (NB), or sugar (SF). In vitro experiments were performed by treating Aag2 cell line with the complement proteins (hC3 orhC5a), compared to control untreated cells (CTL). In vivo samples were collected 3h post-blood-feeding, in vitro samples were collected 24h after incubation with treatments. RNAseq differential expression was evaluated among the different treatments using as reference the genome-wide set of transcripts and also only the infection response (IR) transcripts, a set of immune and related genes.