Phenotypic trends from a compendium of RNAi data for the ovary-enriched gene set. (A) Positive correlation between penetrance category and sequence conservation with D. melanogaster. A similar trend was observed in comparisons with human (data not shown). The highest-penetrance group, MS-EL, is significantly (P < 0.001) overrepresented in all bins containing genes with a BLAST e-value < 1e-50 and underrepresented among genes with an e-value > 1e-6. The converse is true for NELD. Binned e-value ranges on the x-axis are indicated by e-value exponents; sequence similarity decreases from left to right. (B) Positive correlation between penetrance category and fold enrichment in the oogenic germline. The MS-EL group is significantly (P < 0.001) overrepresented among genes with ≥5-fold enrichment and significantly underrepresented among genes <2-fold enriched; the converse is true for the NELD category. Trends in A and B are similar to observations from a smaller set of ovary-enriched genes (Piano et al. 2002). (C) Ovary-enriched genes on the X chromosome are significantly less likely to encode essential gene functions. Emb and Ste genes on the whole are significantly underrepresented on the X chromosome (P < 0.001). Among separate phenotypic categories, only the MS-EL class is significantly underrepresented on the X chromosome (P < 0.001). (D) Functional classes by phenotypic penetrance category. Functional classes (from Kamath et al. 2003): 1, RNA synthesis; 2, DNA synthesis and repair/cell cycle; 3, cellular architecture/collagen; 4, protein synthesis; 5, proteases; 6, protein degradation; 7, RNA binding; 8, signal transduction; 9, chromatin regulation; 10, transcription factor; 11, nucleic acid binding; 12, metabolism; 13, unknown; 14, neuronal; 15, small molecule transport. One functional class with fewer than 10 members in the ovary-enriched set (retroviral- and transposon-derived) is not shown. *, significant (P < 0.001) over- or underrepresentation. For all panels, significance was calculated using the hypergeometric probability test. Phenotypic categories are as in Figure 3, with the addition of PE (postembryonic phenotypes only) in panels A-C; HPEL and LPEL are shown combined (“PEL”); LCL genes from this study are included in the NELD category.
