Paramecium tetraurelia trichocyst exocytosis recovery

Paramecium cells possess a few thousand trichocysts (big secretory granules of 3~4 um long) docked at their surface and whose discharge in the external medium can be triggered using aminoethyldextran (a modified dextran positively charged) without damage to the cells. After discharge, new trichocysts are re-synthesized by the cells. We studied the evolution of the transcriptome during this synthesis. Our experimental design was to extract total RNA before trichocyst discharge triggering and at two time points after discharge, 40 and 210 minutes. Four biological replicates are included for each time point and the untriggered control.