Fig. 3

Characterization of miRNAs with newborn sex-associated expression. a Bar plot showing individual miRNA expression differences between placental samples from female vs. male newborn. Colors represent male-newborn-associated (F < M, blue) and female-newborn-associated (F > M, orange) miRNAs. Abbreviations: F – female newborn; M – male newborn. b Boxplot showing the distributions of miRNA expression fold-change for placental samples from female vs. male newborn infants. The blue and yellow boxes represent miRNAs with male-newborn-associated and female-newborn-associated expression. Each dot represents one miRNA. c Distribution of miRNA evolutionary age for male-newborn-associated (blue) and female-newborn-associated (orange) miRNA. The age scale extends from 433 Mya (age 0) to human-specific miRNA (age 12). Asterisks indicate the significance of the difference (two-sided Wilcoxon test, * represents nominal p < 0.05). d Distribution of miRNA tissue expression index (Tau) for male-newborn-associated (blue) and female-newborn-associated (orange) miRNA. Large values represent greater expression tissue-specificity. e GO terms enriched in targets of male-newborn-associated (blue) and female-newborn-associated (orange) miRNAs. X-axis and the number within circles indicate -log10-transformed p-values