Fig. 4

Detection of fungal reads in placental tissue in pregnancy complications with dual-index primers. a Pre-eclampsia and matched controls (n = 98), b fetal growth restriction (FGR) and matched controls (n = 100), and c pre-term deliveries (n = 100). The Y-axis represents the number of reads assigned to being of possible fungal origin (turquoise) and which were assigned to the Saccharomyces genus (yellow if different from the total number of fungal reads). None of the signals detected reached the 0.1% detection limit or a minimum of 100 fungal reads. The DNA isolations were performed using a single lot of DNA isolation kits but four different boxes. Matched cases and controls were processed in parallel on the same day, using the same box of laboratory reagents, and sequenced together in the same pool of 18S rRNA amplicons. Most pre-eclampsia matched cases and controls were sequenced together in one pool; therefore, the higher number of fungal reads detected may be related to differences in sequencing runs