RNAseq analysis of dose/dose rate response after gamma Co-60 exposure on C elegans larvae with focus on reproductive effects

This study investigated cellular events and transcriptomic alterations underlying reproductive defects caused by chronic gamma (γ) radiation in Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans). Continuous exposure (0, 1 mGy/h [total dose: 0.048 Gy], 10 mGy/h [total dose: 0.48 Gy] and 100 mGy/h; total dose: 4.8 Gy) Total RNA was extracted from 70-h post-L1 males (him-8 strain; ≥ 300 animals per biological replicate, three biological replicates per dose rate) RNAisolation using Direct-zol RNA MicroPrep Kit (Zymo Research, Irvine, CA, USA ) ~30 million 150 bp paired-end reads per sample were generated using half of a Novaseq SP flow cell. Reads were aligned to the C. elegans Ensemble reference genome (WBcel235) using the nf-core/RNA-seq pipeline using the hisat-2 aligner-quantifier.