Fig. 3

Expression of four mitochondrial tRFs during T. cancriformis development. (a) Heatmap shows the expression profiles of mitochondrial tRFs during T. cancriformis development. Each color in the heatmap represents the relative normalized read counts of the three most-enriched tRFs. Red indicates a high relative read frequency and green indicates a low relative read frequency. (E) Egg; (1) 1st instar larva; (2) 2nd instar larva; (3) 3rd instar larva; (4) 4th instar larva; (a) adult. Bar graph shows the total normalized read counts (in all stages) of the three most-enriched tRFs among the tRF variants. (b) Accumulation of all tRF reads that mapped to four individual mature mitochondrial tRNA sequences are visualized in each of the six developmental stages (also see Fig. 2 and Additional file 1: Figure S5). Vertical axis indicates the sum of the normalized read counts, and the horizontal axis indicates the base position of each tRNA from the 5’ to 3’ end. “E”, “1–4”, and “A” indicate egg, 1st–4th instar larvae, and adult, respectively