bioRxiv preprint first posted online Oct. 27, 2016; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/083113. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. Transcriptomic Description of an Endogenous Female State in C. elegans David Angeles-Albores1,y Daniel H.W. Leighton2,y Tiffany Tsou1 Tiffany H. Khaw1 Igor Antoshechkin3 Paul W. Sternberg1,* October 29, 2016 y These authors contributed equally to this work 1 Department of Biology and Biological Engineering, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Caltech, Pasadena, CA, 91125, USA 2 Department of Human Genetics, Department of Biological Chemistry, and Howard Hughes Medical Insti- tute, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA 3 Department of Biology and Biological Engineering, Caltech, Pasadena, CA, 91125, USA * Corresponding author. Contact:
[email protected] Abstract Understanding genome and gene function in a whole organism requires us to fully compre- hend 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 (en- dogenous) 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; endoge- nous, 6th day adult females; and at the same time points, mutant feminized worms.