Figure 2

Diversity of mRNA decay patterns in Drosophila embryos. (a) Clusters of mRNA decay profiles in early embryos (E1, E2 and E3 (Figure 1a)). We show a selection of profiles with increasing net decay amplitudes (purple bar, filled) and differential contributions of early and late decay (grey and black bars, respectively). (b) Global distribution of net mRNA decay (box plot with median and lower/upper quartile, whiskers from minimum to maximum); we considered all probe sets where E3 is significantly lower than E1 (3,658 probe sets; Figure 1a). (c) Net decay partitioned into early and late decay: major decay events took place late between 2 and 3 h AEL (note high density of points close to x-axis); a subset of transcripts showed early decay between 1 and2 h AEL. Dotted lines indicate the ratio of early and late decay (1:1 or 1:4).