Discovery of genomic intervals that underlie nematode responses to benzimidazoles - Fig 4

<p><b>(A) Synteny between major-effect</b><i><b>C. elegans</b></i><b>albendazole QTL and</b><i><b>C. briggsae</b></i><b>fenbendazole QTL on chromosome IV.</b> Circos [<a href="http://www.plosntds.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pntd.0006368#pntd.0006368.ref055" target="_blank">55</a>] plot showing synteny of orthologous gene pairs on chromosome IV. The outer track shows linkage plots for the <i>C. elegans</i> albendazole and <i>C. briggsae</i> fenbendazole mappings (red line: LOD scores; blue line: QTL confidence intervals; black line: significance thresholds). Both QTL intervals fall within major piRNA clusters in both species (piRNA cluster beginning and end sites shaded in blue). Inner green links represent all orthologs that occur outside of the QTL intervals, yellow links represent protein-coding orthologs with at least one member inside either QTL interval but with no detected variants (58 pairs), and black links represent orthologs with at least one member inside either QTL interval and with a detected variant (38 pairs). No orthologs were identified across species that both contained variants and fell within their respective QTL confidence intervals. This result suggests that different genes and mechanisms account for the drug effects mapped to these loci. <b>(B)</b> <b>Conservation of candidate</b> <i><b>C. elegans</b></i> <b>benzimidazole resistance genes in the parasitic nematodes</b> <i><b>S. ratti</b></i> <b>and</b> <i><b>B. malayi</b></i>. Venn diagram showing that a substantial proportion of the QTL-contained protein-coding genes with predicted functional variants (5,434 total) are conserved in representative clade IV and clade III parasites. Approximately 40% of the candidate resistance genes have identifiable orthologs in the clade III human filarial parasite <i>Brugia malayi</i> (2,163 of 5,434) and the clade IV model gastro-intestinal parasite <i>Strongyloides ratti</i> (2,149 of 5,434), and one-third are conserved across all three species (1,685 of 5,434).