PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - David Angeles-Albores
AU  - Daniel H.W. Leighton
AU  - Tiffany Tsou
AU  - Tiffany H. Khaw
AU  - Igor Antoshechkin
AU  - Paul W. Sternberg
TI  - Transcriptomic Description of an Endogenous Female State in <em>C. elegans</em>
AID  - 10.1101/083113
DP  - 2016 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 083113
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/10/30/083113.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/10/30/083113.full
AB  - Understanding genome and gene function in a whole organism requires us to fully comprehend the life cycle and the physiology of the organism in question. Although C. elegans is traditionally though of as a hermaphrodite, XX animals exhaust their sperm and become (endogenous) females after 3 days of egg-laying. The molecular physiology of this state has not been studied as intensely as other parts of the life cycle, in spite of documented changes in behavior and metabolism that occur at this stage. To study the female state of C. elegans, we designed an experiment to measure the transcriptomes of 1st day adult females; endogenous, 6th day adult females; and at the same time points, mutant feminized worms. At these time points, we were able to separate the effects of biological aging from the transition into the female state. We find that spermless young adult animals partially phenocopy 6 day old wild-type animals that have depleted their sperm after egg-laying, and that spermless animals also exhibit fewer differentially expressed genes as they age throughout these 6 days. Our results indicate that sperm loss is responsible for some of the naturally occuring transcriptomic changes that occur during the life cycle of these animals. These changes are enriched in transcription factors canonically associated with neuronal development and differentiation. Our data provide a high-quality picture of the changes that happen in global gene expression throughout the period of early aging in the worm.