Transcriptome analysis of adult Caenorhabditis elegans cells reveals tissue-specific gene and isoform expression. Author Rachel Kaletsky, Victoria Yao, April Williams, Alexi Runnels, Alicja Tadych, Shiyi Zhou, Olga Troyanskaya, Coleen Murphy Publication Year 2018 Type Journal Article Abstract The biology and behavior of adults differ substantially from those of developing animals, and cell-specific information is critical for deciphering the biology of multicellular animals. Thus, adult tissue-specific transcriptomic data are critical for understanding molecular mechanisms that control their phenotypes. We used adult cell-specific isolation to identify the transcriptomes of C. elegans' four major tissues (or "tissue-ome"), identifying ubiquitously expressed and tissue-specific "enriched" genes. These data newly reveal the hypodermis' metabolic character, suggest potential worm-human tissue orthologies, and identify tissue-specific changes in the Insulin/IGF-1 signaling pathway. Tissue-specific alternative splicing analysis identified a large set of collagen isoforms. Finally, we developed a machine learning-based prediction tool for 76 sub-tissue cell types, which we used to predict cellular expression differences in IIS/FOXO signaling, stage-specific TGF-β activity, and basal vs. memory-induced CREB transcription. Together, these data provide a rich resource for understanding the biology governing multicellular adult animals. Keywords Animals, Gene Expression Profiling, Sequence Analysis, RNA, Caenorhabditis elegans, Signal Transduction, Gene Expression Regulation, Models, Molecular, Gene Library, Phenotype, Caenorhabditis elegans Proteins, Forkhead Transcription Factors, Insulin, Insulin-Like Growth Factor I, Transforming Growth Factor beta, Alternative Splicing, Protein Isoforms Journal PLoS Genet Volume 14 Issue 8 Pages e1007559 Date Published 2018 Aug ISSN Number 1553-7404 DOI 10.1371/journal.pgen.1007559 Alternate Journal PLoS Genet PMCID PMC6105014 PMID 30096138 PubMedPubMed CentralGoogle ScholarBibTeXEndNote X3 XML