Fig. 4

Stage-specific increases in gene expression contribute to the extended differentiation of P. falciparum gametocytes. a During stage I-III of development genes in cluster 8 sharply increased in expression (indicated with dotted line) with the abundance of these transcripts indicated by ribbon plot with mean ± SD. GO enrichment of genes involved in regulation of transcription (GO:0010468, 11 transcripts, P = 0.029) is present in this cluster, with presence of protein for these genes in stage I/II and V indicated in black [35, 39,40,41] and the corresponding Interpro domains (https://www.ebi.ac.uk/interpro/) of proteins with unknown function indicated on the right. b The timing of sexually dimorphic transcript profiles [35] are shown in line graphs while the association of male-and female-enriched transcripts with specific clusters [6,7,8,9,10] are shown as standardized residuals and significance of these associations indicated (P < 0.05*,0.001**,0.0001***, Fisher’s exact test). Genes of interest for each sex are highlighted in heatmaps next to male and female symbols. c The genes expressed during maturation (cluster 10) showed a significant association (P < 0.0001, two-tailed Fisher’s exact test) with genes stabilized post-transcriptionally during commitment [18] and H3K36me3-associated genes in asexual development [16, 61] before a sharp increase at stage IV-V of development (dashed line). Blocks indicate the timing of stabilization of the transcripts [18] or abundance of the H3K36me3 mark [57] and the overlap between the 3 datasets are indicated in the Venn diagram. Genes of interest within the three functional datasets are highlighted in heatmap. a-c Area plot designates the timing of appearance and abundance of specific stages throughout the time course