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Background  Female  Aedes aegypti  mosquitoes are vectors of arboviruses that cause diverse diseases of public health significance. Blood protein digestion by midgut proteases provides anautogenous mosquitoes with the nutrients essential for oocyte maturation and egg production. Midgut-specific miR-1174 affects the functions of the midgut through its target gene  serine hydroxymethyltransferase  ( SHMT ). However, less is known about  SHMT -regulated processes in blood digestion by mosquitoes.    Methods  RNAi of  SHMT  was realized by injection of the double-stranded RNA at 16 h post-eclosion. The expression of  SHMT  at mRNA level and protein level was assayed by real-time PCR and Western blotting, respectively. Statistical analyses were performed with GraphPad7 using Student’s t-test.    Results  Here, we confirmed that digestion of blood was inhibited in  SHMT  RNAi-silenced female  A. aegypti  mosquitoes. Evidence is also presented that all  SHMT -depleted female mosquitoes lost their flight ability and died within 48 h of a blood meal. Furthermore, most examined digestive enzymes responded differently in their transcriptional expression to RNAi depletion of  SHMT , with some downregulated, some upregulated and some remaining stable. Phylogenetic analysis showed that transcriptional expression responses to  SHMT  silence were largely unrelated to the sequence similarity between these enzymes.    Conclusions  Overall, this research shows that  SHMT  was expressed at a low level in the midgut of  Aedes aegypti  mosquitoes, but blood-meal digestion was inhibited when  SHMT  was silenced. Transcriptional expressions of different digestive enzymes were affected in response to  SHMT  depletion, suggesting that  SHMT  is required for the blood-meal digestion in the midgut and targeting  SHMT  could provide an effective strategy for vector mosquito population control.

Serine hydroxymethyltransferase controls blood-meal digestion in the midgut of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes