wMelCS provides superior blocking of DENV-3 genome replication in a mosquito injection challenge model.

(A) DENV-3 was injected into the thorax of 6 or 7-day old female mosquitoes at 2.5 x10⁶ TCID₅₀/ml (undiluted) or 10, 100 or 1000-fold dilutions thereof. RNA was extracted from whole mosquito bodies 7-days post infection and virus replication was quantified by qRT-PCR. Data are the mean number of genome copies per mosquito ± SEM. Number of DENV-3 positive mosquitoes/total n are indicated above each bar. ** p < 0.01, ****p<0.0001, Mann-Whitney test. (B) The mean DENV genome copies and SEM from (A) are replotted as a function of virus concentration injected. Significant differences in the mean RNA copies of wMel and wMelCS lines are indicated by ** (p<0.01). Significant differences in the mean RNA copies of wMel.Tet and wMelCS.Tet lines are indicated by ‡ (p<0.05), Mann-Whitney test. Injection dilutions were performed as independent experiments, with the data combined to produce the final data series.