Fig. 3: Gene expression in response to desiccation stress in A. vaga.
From: Bdelloid rotifers deploy horizontally acquired biosynthetic genes against a fungal pathogen
Reanalysis of gene expression data from Hecox-Lea and Mark Welch (2018)51, showing the proportion of HGTC in significantly DE gene subsets when animals are a entering and b recovering from desiccation. Plots arranged as in Fig. 2; enrichment relative to non-DE baselines were assessed as above by two-tailed Fisher’s exact tests. Extent of gene sharing in differentially (c) upregulated and d downregulated subsets between the pathogen and desiccation experiments. Pathogen groups (T7 and T24) are shown in solid outlines, desiccation groups (‘Ent’ = entering anhydrobiosis and ‘Rec’ = recovering from desiccation) in dashed outlines. Values in each segment show the number of A. vaga genes significantly up- or downregulated for intersecting groups. Segments with no values have no genes shared across that intersection. Overall, the proportion of upregulated genes shared between experiments is low (ca. 10%) compared to within experiments (mean = 52%; see Supplementary Table 5 for further details). Values just for HGTC showed a similar pattern: of the 285 HGTC upregulated during recovery from desiccation, only 33 (~12%, T7) and 63 (~24%, T24) were also upregulated in response to pathogens. Even fewer genes are shared among downregulated subsets.
