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. 2018 Mar 27;7:e33105. doi: 10.7554/eLife.33105

Figure 6. Multigene families show variable expression within and between sexual stages of both P.

berghei and P. falciparum. (a) The heatmap shows gene expression levels for multigene family members differentially expressed between male and female P. berghei gametocytes. * gene variably expressed within male (orange) or female (green), Lpl = lysophospholipase, ema1 = erythrocyte membrane antigen 1, (b) Read counts for var mRNAs in P. falciparum female gametocyte single cells and female and male gametocyte populations from bulk RNA-seq data. Only reads which spanned the var introns and only genes with at least two such reads were included. There were insufficient male single cells for analysis.

Figure 6.

Figure 6—figure supplement 1. Multigene families show variable expression in sexual stages of both P.

Figure 6—figure supplement 1.

berghei and P. falciparum, respectively. (A) Pir gene expression was highly variable across male gametocytes. In addition, more pir genes were expressed in males than females. These are distinct subfamilies of pir genes from those variably expressed in asexual stages. (B) Read counts for var mRNAs in P. falciparum female gametocyte single cells and female and male gametocyte populations from bulk RNA-seq data. Only reads which spanned the var introns and only genes with at least two such reads were included. There were insufficient male single-cells for analysis. For var genes, we highlight the type (e.g. upsB, upsC or var2csa) and whether we found evidence for expression of the mRNA, rather than reads that might represent ncRNAs known to be expressed from these genes. Epf1 = exported protein family 1, gbp = glycophorin binding protein, emp3 = erythrocyte membrane protein 3.
Figure 6—figure supplement 2. Analysis of the co-expression pattern of the ApiAP2 family of transcription factors (TFs) in sexual parasites.

Figure 6—figure supplement 2.

(A) Expression of Plasmodium ApiAP2 genes in sexual parasites. Orthologous genes are presented on the same rows. (B) A co-expression network for P. berghei was built using significant positive and negative correlations (p<0.05 by Pearson’s correlation) between TFs and weighted according to their correlation coefficient. Numbers on the network refers to the TFs as presented in A.