Research Paper Volume 5, Issue 6 pp 394—411

Figure 2. Presence of the germline alters miRNA abundance.

(A-F) Normalized Ct values demonstrating that miRNA expression from the mir-35-41 cluster is dramatically different in N2 animals with age but is virtually absent, at all ages examined, in glp-1 germline-less animals. In N2 animals, mir-35 (A), mir-36 (B) and mir-37 (C) are expressed at much higher levels in old animals, while mir-38 (D) has a median value that is higher in aged animals. mir-39 (E) is also dramatically higher in aged animals. In glp-1 mutants only mir-37 (F) was detected, and its levels were much lower than in wild type animals. (G) Graphical representation of the difference between miRNA abundance in old and young worms, for both wild type and germline-less mutants. The values graphed are the average values at the old age minus the averaged values at the young age for each of the two genotypes with log2 transformation to describe the fold change (i.e. 2^-(average Ct old - average Ct young)). In all graphs with error bars they indicate the standard error of the mean. In individual worm graphs each point is the average from 2-3 technical replicates.