Fig 1. Experimental strategy to compare molecular events occurring through male and female S. mansoni development.

(A) A monomiracidial infection of mollusks was first performed in order to obtain either ZZ male or ZW female clonal cercariae. (B) The sex of the cercarial clones was determined by PCR of female-specific sequences and unisexual infection of mice was then performed. For the molecular study, we recovered one free-living undifferentiated stage of the parasite: cercariae; and four intra-vertebrate stages: (C) the three differentiating schistosomulum stages and (D) the adult stage. The schistosomulum stages are characterized by the onset of sexual dimorphism between s#2 and s#3, and are described more in details in the S1 protocol. For these five stages, we compared the male and female transcriptomes using RNAseq (biological duplicate). For the non-differentiated cercariae and the sexually differentiated adults we also performed a ChIPseq in duplicate for males and triplicate for females.