Comparative analysis on transcriptome sequencings of six Sargassum species in China

摘要

Species of Sargassum are distributed worldwide, and are of great ecological and economic importance in marine ecosystems and bioresources. In this study, transcriptome sequencings of six Sargassum species were performed for the first time using an Illumina platform. For each sample, a total of 2.1-2.5 Gb of nucle-otides are collected and assembled into 69 871-116 790 scaffolds, with an average length of 410-550 bp and N50 length of 756-1 462 bp. A total of 20 512-28 684 unigenes of each sample were annotated and compared well with known gene sequences from nr database. Clusters of Orthologous Groups (COG), gene ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analyses were also performed for further un-derstanding of gene functions and regulation pathways. Gene expression levels were calculated based on RPKM values and compared among these species, especially for those genes related to carbohydrate metab-olism. Cluster analyses indicated that the differences of global gene expression between S. fusiforme, which was nominated as Hizikia fusiformis before, and other five species were not significant. Further phylogenet-ic analysis of 108 orthologous genes confirmed that S. fusiforme had closer relationship with S. hemiphyllum rather than S. horneri. These transcriptome data provided valuable information for better understanding of genome and gene characteristics of Sargassum algae and benefiting comparative and phylogenetic studies of Phaeophyceae species in future studies.