Small RNA-Seq A. aegypti fat body 6h post blood feeding
Female mosquitoes (4-day-old) were fed on the calf of a human volunteer for 30 min. Blood-fed mosquitoes with red distended abdomens were identified and transferred into another cage. The fat body of the mosquitoes was dissected from those collected just before blood feeding (negative control) and 6, 12, 24, and 48 hours post blood feeding (hpb). Dissected fat body from seven mosquitoes were pulled together as one biological replicate. Small RNAs were extracted from the samples using miRNeasy Mini kit (Qiagen) and treated with Turbo DNase kit (Thermo Fischer) to remove possible genomic DNAs following the manufacturers protocols. Two biological replicates were used per treatment. After initial quality control (260/280 ratio and agarose gel analysis), they were sent to GENEWIZ for Illumina sequencing of small RNAs.