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| The Chinese mitten crab (Eriocheir sinensis) is an adult limnic crab with great commercial significance that inhabits eastern and northern China. The brachyuran decapod crustaceans have brachyurization metamorphosis in the early developmental process characterized by a reduced abdomen, folded beneath the cephalothorax, and inserted between the pereiopods or in a special cavity. However, little is known about the mechanisms responsible for the brachyurization development in brachyuran decapods. Transcriptome and expression profiling data of this species may provide insight into molecular mechanisms of brachyurization development. In the present study, a transcriptome library and nine digital gene expression (DGE) libraries at nine development stages of Chinese mitten crab larva were constructed，sequenced and assernbled by RNA-high-throughput sequencing approach with bioinformatics analysis. In addition, we constructed nine DGE libraries: embryo stage (egg), the second zoeal stage (stage Z2), the third zoeal stage (stage Z3), the fourth zoeal stage (stage Z4), the fifth zoeal stage (stage Z5), the megalopa stage (stage M), the first crab stage (stage J1), the second crab stage (stage J2), and the third crab stage (stage J3). Illumina sequencing revealed 76112 unigene. In total 28,129 of the putative protein unigenes showed significant similarity to known proteins in databases using BLASTx and ESTscan. To analyze the DGE profiling, we mainly compared the gene expression variations among eggs, stage Z2, Z3, stage Z4, stage Z5, stage M, stage J1, stage J2 and stage J3. Thousands of genes showed significantly different expression levels based on the various comparisons. This study demonstrated a successful application of the Illumina platform to de novo assembly of the transcriptome of a non-model brachyuran organism. |
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| Keywords:Eriocheir sinensis; larval development; transcriptome; digital gene expression (DGE) profiling; high throughput sequencing |
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