Additional file 16 of Limited impact of the siRNA pathway on transposable element expression in Aedes aegypti

Additional file 17: Figure S15 – Size distributions of small RNA reads following different levels of filtering. The plots are structured in three main columns – thorax samples are on the left, midgut samples in the center, and ovary samples on the right. Within each partitioned region, control mosquito libraries are shown on the left and Dcr2 mutant libraries are shown on the right. The rows correspond to reads subset based on filtering: First row – adapter-trimmed only (‘unfiltered/raw’), second row – filtered for reads mapping to miRNA, tRNA, snRNA, and snoRNA genes, third row – further filtered for reads mapping to annotated piRNA clusters, fourth row – only reads that map to piRNA clusters but not to any miRNA, tRNA, snRNA, or snoRNA genes. The percentage of 21nt reads is added to each plot. The error bars denote one standard deviation. When filtered for small RNA genes, a ‘block’ of reads can be seen in thorax samples, attributable to RNA degradation, while a piRNA-sized ‘hump’ can be seen most clearly in ovary samples, but also in midgut samples. Unfiltered reads from somatic tissues display a clear domination of the library by miRNA-sized reads, which are filtered away following intersection with annotated small RNA genes.