Characterization and analysis of a transcriptome from the boreal spider crab Hyas araneus

Abstract Research investigating the genetic basis of physiological responses has significantly broadened our understanding of the mechanisms underlying organismic response to environmental change. However, genomic data are currently available for few taxa only, thus excluding physiological model spe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part D: Genomics and Proteomics
Main Authors: Harms, Lars, Frickenhaus, Stephan, Schiffer, Melanie, Mark, Felix Christopher, Storch, Daniela, Pörtner, Hans-Otto, Held, Christoph, Lucassen, Magnus
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:unknown
Published: Elsevier 2013
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Online Access:https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/34409/
https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/34409/1/Harms_etal_2013_unproofed.pdf
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1744117X13000543
https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.42665
https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.42665.d001
Description
Summary:Abstract Research investigating the genetic basis of physiological responses has significantly broadened our understanding of the mechanisms underlying organismic response to environmental change. However, genomic data are currently available for few taxa only, thus excluding physiological model species from this approach. In this study we report the transcriptome of the model organism Hyas araneus from Spitsbergen (Arctic). We generated 20,479 transcripts, using the 454 {GS} {FLX} sequencing technology in combination with an Illumina HiSeq sequencing approach. Annotation by Blastx revealed 7159 blast hits in the {NCBI} non-redundant protein database. The comparison between the spider crab H. araneus transcriptome and {EST} libraries of the European lobster Homarus americanus and the porcelain crab Petrolisthes cinctipes yielded 3229/2581 sequences with a significant hit, respectively. The clustering by the Markov Clustering Algorithm (MCL) revealed a common core of 1710 clusters present in all three species and 5903 unique clusters for H. araneus. The combined sequencing approaches generated transcripts that will greatly expand the limited genomic data available for crustaceans. We introduce the {MCL} clustering for transcriptome comparisons as a simple approach to estimate similarities between transcriptomic libraries of different size and quality and to analyze homologies within the selected group of species. In particular, we identified a large variety of reverse transcriptase (RT) sequences not only in the H. araneus transcriptome and other decapod crustaceans, but also sea urchin, supporting the hypothesis of a heritable, anti-viral immunity and the proposed viral fragment integration by host-derived {RTs} in marine invertebrates.