In Silico identification and annotation of non-coding RNAs by RNA-seq and De Novo assembly of the transcriptome of Tomato Fruits

PLoS One. 2017 Feb 10;12(2):e0171504. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0171504. eCollection 2017.

Abstract

The complexity of the tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) transcriptome has not yet been fully elucidated. To gain insights into the diversity and features of coding and non-coding RNA molecules of tomato fruits, we generated strand-specific libraries from berries of two tomato cultivars grown in two open-field conditions with different soil type. Following high-throughput Illumina RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq), more than 90% of the reads (over one billion, derived from twelve dataset) were aligned to the tomato reference genome. We report a comprehensive analysis of the transcriptome, improved with 39,095 transcripts, which reveals previously unannotated novel transcripts, natural antisense transcripts, long non-coding RNAs and alternative splicing variants. In addition, we investigated the sequence variants between the cultivars under investigation to highlight their genetic difference. Our strand-specific analysis allowed us to expand the current tomato transcriptome annotation and it is the first to reveal the complexity of the poly-adenylated RNA world in tomato. Moreover, our work demonstrates the usefulness of strand specific RNA-seq approach for the transcriptome-based genome annotation and provides a resource valuable for further functional studies.

MeSH terms

  • Alternative Splicing
  • Contig Mapping
  • Fruit / genetics
  • Molecular Sequence Annotation
  • Polymorphism, Genetic
  • RNA, Plant / genetics*
  • RNA, Untranslated / genetics*
  • Solanum lycopersicum / genetics*
  • Transcriptome*

Substances

  • RNA, Plant
  • RNA, Untranslated

Grants and funding

The authors received no specific funding for this work."