PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Rachel Kaletsky AU - Vicky Yao AU - April Williams AU - Alexi M. Runnels AU - Sean B. King AU - Alicja Tadych AU - Shiyi Zhou AU - Olga G. Troyanskaya AU - Coleen T. Murphy TI - Transcriptome Analysis of Adult <em>C. elegans</em> Cells Reveals Tissue-specific Gene and Isoform Expression AID - 10.1101/232728 DP - 2017 Jan 01 TA - bioRxiv PG - 232728 4099 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/12/12/232728.short 4100 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/12/12/232728.full AB - 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 “super-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 and a neuron-specific CREB isoform. Finally, we developed a machine learning-based prediction tool for 70 sub-tissue cell types, which we used to predict cellular expression differences in IIS/FOXO signaling, stage-specific TGF-b activity, and basal vs. memory-induced CREB transcription. Together, these data provide a rich resource for understanding the biology governing multicellular adult animals