Monitoring of the Parasite Load in the Digestive Tract of Rhodnius prolixus by Combined qPCR Analysis and Imaging Techniques Provides New Insights into the Trypanosome Life Cycle

Abstract

These data show that a tuned dynamic control of the population operates in the insect gut to maintain an equilibrium between non-dividing infective trypomastigote forms and dividing epimastigote forms of the parasite, which is crucial for vector competence.