Hemolymph of Anopheles stephensi from uninfected and Plasmodium berghei-infected mosquitoes. 2. Free amino acids.

Determinations were made of free amino acids in hemolymph collected from adult female Anopheles stephensi mosquitoes. The hemolymph first was fractionated by extraction and precipitation procedures, after which qualitative determinations of free amino acids were made by high voltage thin layer electrophoresis, and thin layer chromatography. Subsequent quantitative determinations were made with an automatic amino acid analyzer. The concentration of total free amino acids in the hemolymph rose 60--70% after the mosquito took a blood meal, and remained relatively constant thereafter. When mosquitoes took a blood meal infected with the rodent malaria parasite Plasmodium berghei, the rise in total free amino acids was only 15--25%. The chief differences that occurred with individual free amino acids was that infected mosquitoes had greater increases in arginine, greater decreases in valine and histidine, and a total loss of detectable methionine.