Fig. 4

Nitrogen limitation regulates algal life history by inducing expression changes of genes associated with motility and cell cycle progression. Enrichment of cell motility-related gene sets in DEGs identified from Spis vs Con (a), N vs Con (b), P vs Con (c), and Fe vs Con (d). The y-axis represents running enrichment scores calculated by GSEA, while the x-axis shows the rank of associated genes in DEGs identified from each of the differential expression comparisons. The increment levels of the enrichment scores indicate the correlation of the corresponding gene set with the phenotypic change of the cells under different treatments. e Expression level of genes involved in both cell motility and cell cycle arrest under different conditions. Venn diagram indicates the overlapped 10 genes involved in both cell cycle arrest and cell motility. f Volcano plots indicate the expression changes of polycystin-2 genes in Spis and N, compared to free-living control condition. Blue dots represent the nine polycystin-2 genes in S. microadriaticum