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. 2014 Apr 24;10(4):e1004286. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1004286

Figure 7. The effect of alg-1 mutation on the levels of mature microRNAs in total RNA from L2 larvae using FirePlex miRSelect assay.

Figure 7

(A, B) Quantification of let-7-Family microRNA abundance (normalized to wild type), in the context of suppression of lin-28(0) mutants by alg-1 mutations (A), and for alg-1 mutations in the lin-28(+) genetic background (B). Only detectable let-7-Family microRNAs are shown. (A) let-7 microRNA levels increase dramatically in lin-28(lf) mutants and are reduced by the addition of the alg-1 mutations. Levels of other let-7 family members are not increased to statistically significant levels in lin-28 mutants, and are either not affected or are decreased by the alg-1 mutations to varying degrees. All strains carry the col-19::gfp transgene. (B) let-7-Family microRNA levels are decreased in all alg-1 mutants compared to wild type, but alg-1(0) decreases microRNA abundance more than alg-1(anti) mutations do. (C, D) Scatterplots comparing abundance of microRNAs in total RNA from L2 larvae of wild type (X-axis, arbitrary units) and alg-1 mutants (Y-axis, arbitrary units) using FirePlex miRSelect assays for 53 microRNAs. Complete loss of ALG-1 in alg-1(0) and compromised ALG-1 function in alg-1(ma202) and alg-1(ma192) results in under accumulation of microRNAs. alg-1(ma202) and alg-1(ma192) mutants have higher levels of microRNAs than alg-1(0) animals, *p = 0.01, **p = 0.003. (D) Subset of data in (C) zoomed in to show the lower abundance microRNAs. All strains in (B–D) carry lin-31(lf) and col-19::gfp in the background. The lin-31 mutation is present in order to suppress alg-1(anti) vulval bursting phenotypes by non-heterochronic methods.