Small RNA contents in planarian neoblasts and whole-body samples. (A–D) Length profiles of Solexa reads from sequencing of the untreated whole-body sample. Only reads successfully mapped to the genome are considered. (A) All reads, (B) miRNA reads, (C) piRNA reads, and (D) reads mapping to coding exons are shown. Note that D is on a different scale. piRNA reads >25 nt (dark green) have features characteristic for piRNAs (see sections on piRNAs). These features were still present but weaker (70–80%, see SI Text) for the remaining piRNA reads (light green, length 17–25 nt). (E–G, pie charts) Contents of RNA species in the three Solexa datasets: (E) neoblasts, (F) untreated planarians, and (G) irradiated planarians. Dark green, piRNAs; light green, short piRNAs; dark blue, miRNAs; light blue, rRNA; yellow, tRNA; orange, mRNA. (E–G, bar graphs) miRNA (blue), piRNA (dark green), and short piRNA (light green) expression. The 454 data, produced by sequencing RNAs that were 18–25-nt long, were used to estimate miRNA expression, whereas the Solexa data were used for piRNA expression. Total miRNA and piRNA read counts were normalized to miR-71c. miRNA expression of the untreated sample was set to 1, and the other expression bars were scaled accordingly (numbers in parentheses above each bar). Note that piRNA expression in the neoblast sample is out of scale.