Fig. 1

Sexually dimorphic gene expression in the bi-potential and differentiating chicken embryonic gonads. a Venn diagrams indicating the number of significantly DE (FDR <0.001) genes for each time-point (undifferentiated gonads E4.5, differentiating gonads E6). This is divided into male-biased (blue) and female-biased (red). 193 genes were male biased at E4.5, and 656 at E6. Of these, 165 genes were DE at both time points, with only 28 genes being DE at only E4.5. 74 genes were DE in a female biased manner at E4.5, and 347 at E6. 62 of these were DE at both time points. b A heatmap of the top 400 DE genes for each sample (2 females and 2 males for each time point). The colour scale indicates the proportion of counts in each sample with respect to the sum across samples, after normalising for library size. With red indicating the highest expression relative to other samples and dark blue being the least. On the left is hierarchical clustering of these genes. The known W-linked genes are indicated by pink lines while the Z-linked genes are indicated by blue lines. c The number of DE genes (both male and female biased) found on the autosomes (green bars) versus the sex chromosomes (grey bars), for each time point