The Amblema plicata Transcriptome as a Resource to Assess Environmental Impacts on Freshwater Mussels

摘要: High-throughput sequencing technologies, such as RNA (RNA-Seq), have greatly enhanced our ability to sequence and characterize the transcriptome of nonmodel organisms. The study expression thousands genes in highly threatened yet understudied organisms holds great potential for advancing field conservation biology. Despite rapid gains analytical abilities understanding physiological underpinnings organism, genomic resources remain limited freshwater mussels, one most imperiled groups animals worldwide. Here we provide first characterization North American mussel Amblema plicata (threeridge) using an RNA-Seq approach. Gill tissue samples were collected from mussels Muskingum River Washington County, Ohio, USA. was extracted sequenced on Illumina HiSeq 2500 sequencer with output 100-base-pair paired-end reads. De novo assembly reads performed Trinity. Assembled transcripts used BLASTx queries against National Center Biotechnology nonredundant database, functional annotation gene ontology (GO) terms Blast2GO. Transcriptome produced 264,027 transcripts. Of these transcripts, 54,331 (20.58%) received BLAST hits 22,223 annotated GO terms. We examples identified candidate that may be useful studying responses various environmental stressors, temperature, hypoxia, pollutants. A. improves available aid development molecular tools, ultimate goal increasing physiology improving techniques.