The Rhinella arenarum transcriptome: de novo assembly, annotation and gene prediction

Sci Rep. 2020 Jan 23;10(1):1053. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-57961-4.

Abstract

The common toad Rhinella arenarum is widely distributed in Argentina, where it is utilised as an autochthonous model in ecotoxicological research and environmental toxicology. However, the lack of a reference genome makes molecular assays and gene expression studies difficult to carry out on this non-model species. To address this issue, we performed a genome-wide transcriptome analysis on R. arenarum larvae through massive RNA sequencing, followed by de novo assembly, annotation, and gene prediction. We obtained 57,407 well-annotated transcripts representing 99.4% of transcriptome completeness (available at http://rhinella.uncoma.edu.ar). We also defined a set of 52,800 high-confidence lncRNA transcripts and demonstrated the reliability of the transcriptome data to perform phylogenetic analysis. Our comprehensive transcriptome analysis of R. arenarum represents a valuable resource to perform functional genomic studies and to identify potential molecular biomarkers in ecotoxicological research.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Argentina
  • Base Sequence
  • Bufonidae / genetics*
  • Female
  • Gene Expression Profiling
  • Genome / genetics*
  • High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing
  • Male
  • Molecular Sequence Annotation / methods
  • RNA, Long Noncoding / genetics
  • Sequence Analysis, RNA
  • Transcriptome / genetics*

Substances

  • RNA, Long Noncoding