Fig. 3

Correlation curves between the ratio of male to female transcript copies and the ratio of male to female gametocytes. For each combination of targets, the figure shows the correlation curve between the ratio of male to female mean transcript copy number (x axis) and the ratio of male to female gametocyte (y axis). The data used to build the curves are shown in Additional file 1: Figure S3. The mean transcript copy number was obtained for each target by averaging the number of copies obtained from replicates of sorting experiments. Gametocytes sex ratios were as follows: 0.01 (2.5M/250F), 0.1 (25M/250F, 2.5M/25F), 1 (2.5M/2. 5F, 25M/25F, 250M/250F), 10 (25M/2.5F, 250M/25F), 100 (250M/2.5F). The following formula was used to extrapolate gametocyte sex ratio from RTqPCR data for mixed cultures and field samples: \({\text{Female/male}}\;{\text{gametocyte}}\;{\text{ratio}}\,{ = }\, 1 0^{{\, ( {\text{slope}}\,\, \times \,{ \log }\, ( {\text{n}}\,{\text{male}}\,{\kern 1pt} {\text{transcript}}\,\,{\text{copies/n}}\,\,{\text{female}}\,\,{\text{transcript}}\,\,{\text{copies)}}\,{ + }\,{\text{Y}}\, \times \,\,{\text{intercept)}}}}\). Slope and intercept for the different target combinations are shown in Additional file 1: Table S4