Table 1. Correlation analysis between two selected individual blood clams.

	T01	T02	T03	T04	T05	T06	T07
T02	0.8843
T03	0.7863	0.8641
T04	0.8557	0.9085	0.7593
T05	0.6415	0.7548	0.7108	0.6454
T06	0.5396	0.4673	0.4125	0.4078	0.7390
T07	0.5991	0.5164	0.4338	0.4442	0.7004	0.8368
T08	0.4502	0.5410	0.5555	0.4406	0.8801	0.7267	0.6601

Values shown represent r² value. T01-T04 are females and T05-T08 are males. The condition (r²>0.82) was used to eliminate differential individuals. T01, T02, T04 were similar, thus eliminating T03 which was significantly different. T05 is similar to T08 while T06 is similar to T07. However, T05 was not similar to T06. Therefore, we constructed two groups for analysis (T05 T08 versus T01 T02 T04, T06 T07 versus T01 T02 T04) to search for more differentially-expressed genes (DEGs).