De novo transcriptome assembly of the Southern Ocean copepod Rhincalanus gigas sheds light on developmental changes in gene expression

• Published in: Marine Genomics
• Main Authors: Berger, Cory A., Steinberg, Deborah K., Copley, Nancy, Tarrant, Ann M.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Elsevier 2021
• Subjects: Southern Ocean; Zooplankton; Lipid metabolism; Development; Molting; Copepods
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/1912/26888

© The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Berger, C. A., Steinberg, D. K., Copley, N. J., & Tarrant, A. M. De novo transcriptome assembly of the Southern Ocean copepod Rhincalanus gigas sheds light on developmental changes in gene expression. Marine Genomics, (2021): 100835, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.margen.2021.100835. Copepods are small crustaceans that dominate most zooplankton communities in terms of both abundance and biomass. In the polar oceans, a subset of large lipid-storing copepods occupy central positions in the food web because of their important role in linking phytoplankton and microzooplankton with higher trophic levels. In this paper, we generated a high-quality de novo transcriptome for Rhincalanus gigas, the largest—and among the most abundant—of the Southern Ocean copepods. We then conducted transcriptional profiling to characterize the developmental transition between late-stage juveniles and adult females. We found that juvenile R. gigas substantially upregulate lipid synthesis and glycolysis pathways relative to females, as part of a developmental gene expression program that also implicates processes such as muscle growth, chitin formation, and ion transport. This study provides the first transcriptional profile of a developmental transition within Rhincalanus gigas or any endemic Southern Ocean copepod, thereby extending our understanding of copepod molecular physiology. Funding for this project was provided by the National Science Foundation (Grants OPP-1746087 to AMT and OPP-1440435 to DKS).