Fig. 2: Selected gene families with sexually dimorphic regulation.

a Bubble plot representation of the top 25 transcription factors out of 218 differentially expressed in any of the five developmental stages of the two sexes. Bubble size represents log₂ of fold change in expression of that gene (only genes that passed the filter padj <= 0.05, |log₂ fold change|>= 1 and base mean >= 5 are plotted), bubble color (cyan: males and orange: hermaphrodites) represents enrichment in either sex. TFs were mined using wTF2.2, an updated compendium of C. elegans transcription factors⁵⁵. b Normalized RNA-seq expression values of ces-2 across all developmental stages, n = 4 biological repeats per sample. P-values were <0.0001 for all comparisons between sexes in all developmental stages c Real-time qPCR analysis of ces-2 mRNA (ces-2 mRNA male expression normalized to hermaphrodite expression) across all developmental stages, n = 3 biological repeats per sample. d Log₂ normalized expression values of differentially expressed DM domain genes across development, n = 4 biological repeats per sample. e Bubble plot representation of homeobox genes differentially expressed in any of the five developmental stages of the two sexes. Bubble size represents log₂ of fold change in expression of that gene (only genes that passed the filter padj <= 0.05, |log₂ fold change|>= 1 and base mean >= 5 are plotted), bubble color (cyan: males and orange: hermaphrodites) represents enrichment in either sex. In b, c, and d data are presented as mean values +/− SEM. In c p-values were calculated by a two-sided t-test for each comparison performed. In b, d adjusted p-values were calculated by a two-sided Wald test for each comparison performed by DESeq2¹²². Source data are provided as a Source Data file.