Heat map of the 2000 most variably expressed transcripts in the four C. elegans stages. The 15,000 most abundantly expressed transcripts, based on their mean expression, were evaluated for their variation in expression, based on the ratio of the variance to the mean. We arbitrarily selected the 2000 most variable transcripts (Supplemental Table S8), which were then clustered based on their coverage levels as reflected in the dcpm statistic. The columns represent the four stages, L2, L3, L4 and young adult (YA), respectively, and each row represents a different transcript. Transcripts absent in L2 and abundant in L4 and young adult include the major sperm protein (msp-), vitellogenin (vit-), and other transcripts related to the germline.
