Fig. 4

Expression patterns of 30 genes identified via proteomics of pure venom. A: Volcano plot of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between ovaries (Ov) and venom glands (Vg). Genes up-regulated in ovaries and VGs are highlighted in blue and pink, respectively. The thresholds for significant differential expression are a fold-change (FC) > 2 (horizontal dashed lines) and FDR ≤ 0.001 (vertical dashed lines). Among the VG-upregulated genes, those encoding the 30 proteins identified in pure venom are specifically highlighted. B: Heatmap of expression levels for the 30 venom genes. Expression is shown as counts per million (CPM) across VG (Vg1, Vg2) and ovary (Ov1, Ov2) samples. Genes are hierarchically clustered based on their expression levels and FC between VGs and ovaries. Genes encoding venom proteins with predicted signal peptides (SP) are marked in black, while the six venom proteins lacking SP are shown in white