Fig. 2

Comparative expression data for different stages. a Heatmap of expression, with genes on the vertical axis, and strains (male, ♂; female, ♀; asexual, A) on the horizontal axis. Replicates from each life-stage cluster independently (upper dendrogram). b Multi-dimensional scaling plot, showing clustering of sexual stages. c Venn diagram showing male and female genes that are differentially expressed compared to asexual genes, and the overlap between these groups. d Schematic depicting the asexual developmental precursor, and the differentiation into either female or male gametocytes. Thick arrows represent up- or downregulation, labelled with how many genes are affected, and arrow width proportional. Monochrome arrows represent shared up- or downregulation; red and green arrow pairs represent up- or downregulation specific to female or male gametocytes respectively. The green-red arrow pair on top represents genes identified by direct comparison of the two genders. e Fold-change of reads mapped to each chromosome compared to asexual samples. Each point represents a biological sample. The numbers of mapped reads were normalised to total reads mapped for that sample, then fold-change to the mean of the asexual counts for each chromosome plotted. Female and male samples with significant differences to asexual stages are marked by blue rectangles (p value < 0.05)