Table 3.

Functional enrichment analysis of significant differentially expressed genes in C. elegans.

A
GO term (biological process)	P-value
Response to cadmium ion (GO:0046686)	0.0003
Response to metal ion (GO:0010038)	0.01
Asparagine metabolic process (GO:0006528)	0.03
Positive regulation of autophagy (GO:0010508)	0.04
Acylglycerol catabolic process (GO:0046464)	0.04
Amino-acid betaine metabolic process (GO:0006577)	0.04
Aspartate family amino acid biosynthetic process (GO:0009067)	0.05
GO term (molecular function)	P-value
Copper ion binding (GO:0005507)	0.04
Carnitine O-palmitoyltransferase activity (GO:0004095)	0.05
O-palmitoyltransferase activity (GO:0016416)	0.05
Carbon-nitrogen ligase activity, with glutamine as amido-N-donor (GO:0016884)	0.05
B
GO term (biological process)	P-value
Nucleotide-sugar metabolic process (GO:0009225)	0.01
Dosage compensation by hypoactivation of the X chromosome (GO:0042464)	0.02
Establishment or maintenance of apical/basal cell polarity (GO:0035088)	0.02
Nucleotide-sugar biosynthetic process (GO:0009226)	0.02
Dosage compensation (GO:0007549)	0.02
Response to gamma radiation (GO:0010332)	0.02
Maintenance of epithelial cell apical/basal polarity (GO:0045197)	0.02
3ʹ-UTR-mediated mRNA destabilization (GO:0061158)	0.03
mRNA destabilization (GO:0061157)	0.03
Phospholipid metabolic process (GO:0006644)	0.04
Response to ionizing radiation (GO:0010212)	0.05
GO term (molecular function)	P-value
Phospholipase activity (GO:0004620)	0.03
Hydro-lyase activity (GO:0016836)	0.04
Lipase activity (GO:0016298)	0.04

In total, 141 genes were significantly up-regulated (A) and 38 significantly down-regulated (B) in C. elegans exposed to 20 µM Cd from L1 to L4 stage (cut-off of ≥ 2 & ≤ −2 fold change and a P-value ≤ 0.05). The analysis was conducted with WormEnrichr. No significantly changing cellular component GO terms were identified. The respective GO terms and the P-values are indicated.