The C. elegans transcriptome is regulated by environmental and developmental history

We show that C. elegans adults that passed through the stress-resistant dauer stage due to starvation exhibit opposite transcriptional profiles compared to adults that entered dauer due to crowding, and are distinct from animals that bypassed dauer. These “seesaw” trends in gene expression extend to a majority of genes in the genome and, based upon the direction of change, are enriched on different chromosomes. Overall design: mRNA-seq was performed on the Illumina platform to measure gene expression in wild-type N2 and WM193 csr-1(tm892); neIs20 [(pie-1::3xFLAG::csr-1 + unc-119(+)] adults (24 hours post-L4 stage) that had continously developed (CON) or transiently passed through the dauer stage (PD). The PD samples experienced either starvation or high pheromone (crowding) dauer-inducing conditions.