Transcriptional mechanisms underlying sex-biased miRNA expression. (A) Correlation between sex-biased expression of intronic miRNAs (y-axis) and their host genes (x-axis). Male-to-female (M:F) expression ratios were calculated with DESeq2. For each tissue, the Spearman correlation coefficient (rho) is given, together with its Benjamini-Hochberg corrected P-value (Benjamini and Hochberg 1995). (B) Overview of the two miRNA loci that were associated with sex-biased DHS regions (Ling et al. 2010) in mouse liver. In both cases, a sequence of 1 kb is depicted. The displayed miRNA precursor region corresponds to the 5p and 3p sequences with the intervening loop sequence. (C) Expression levels in mouse liver of the 5p and 3p mature miRNAs shown in B, for three female and three male replicates. Raw read counts were normalized with DESeq2. Statistical significance: (*) P < 0.05; (**) P < 0.01; (***) P < 0.001.
