Differential mRNA decay occurs throughout different developmental stages of C. elegans embryogenesis. (A) Scatter plots comparing mRNA half-lives specific to early-, middle-, and late-stage cells in all pairwise comparisons. Each point represents a gene. Blue points correspond to the top 5% of genes with faster mRNA decay in the later stage compared with in the earlier stage. Pink points correspond to the top 5% of genes with slower mRNA decay in the later stage compared with in the earlier stage. Dashed line is the x = y line. (B) Select GO categories enriched among the top 5% of genes with faster mRNA decay in the later stage of embryogenesis compared with the earlier stage of embryogenesis. The background set of genes used in each comparison was shared genes we were able to calculate stage-specific mRNA half-lives for between the relevant stages. (C–F, left) Median scaled expression of gene subset using data from a whole-embryo RNA sequencing time series (Hashimshony et al. 2015). Blue shading spans the early stage; purple shading spans the middle stage; and pink shading spans the late stage. (Right) Plot displaying the change in mRNA half-lives from earlier to later stage for gene subset.
