De novo assembly of transcriptome from the gametophyte of the marine red algae Pyropia seriata and identification of abiotic stress response genes

Abstract

Pyropia seriata, a marine red alga belonging to the order Bangiales (Rhodophyta), is one of the most valuable and widely cultivated Pyropia species. Water temperature and salinity are major factors affecting the growth and yield of Pyropia cultivation. Currently, there is limited data regarding the regulatory pathways and molecular mechanisms of the abiotic stress responses in red algae. In this study, we generated 1,403,321 expression sequence tags (ESTs) using 454 sequencing technology from the gametophyte thalli under control and high temperature conditions to identify the abiotic stress response genes. De novo assembly of the transcriptome reads generated 11,218 contigs, whereas 135,292 sequences remained as unassembled reads. Approximately 61.9 % of the contigs shared significant homology with known genes in our database, including the NCBI RefSeq database, plus Pyropia and Porphyra sequences. Sequence analyses demonstrated that the Pyropia transcriptome has a relatively high guanine-cytosine (GC) content with predominant trinucleotide repeats (93.9 %). GGC was the most common motif in identified simple sequence repeats (SSRs). We selected 754 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) response to abiotic stress based on reads per kilobase per million reads (RPKM) values, many of which have no significant homology with known sequences in public database. These transcriptome sequences will facilitate future studies to understand the common processes and novel mechanisms involved in abiotic stress tolerance in red algae.