Characterization of the Conus bullatus genome and its venom-duct transcriptome

BMC Genomics

Research Article

Baldomero M Olivera¹  Pradip K Bandyopadhyay¹  Hao Hu²  Mark Yandell² 

[1] Department of Biology, University of Utah, 84112, Salt Lake City, UT, USA;Eccles institute of Human Genetics, University of Utah, and School of Medicine, 84112, Salt Lake City, UT, USA;

关键词: Transcriptome Assembly;    Simple Repeat;    Repeat Content;    Estimate Genome Size;    Ziconotide;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2164-12-60

 received in 2010-08-23, accepted in 2011-01-25,  发布年份 2011

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe venomous marine gastropods, cone snails (genus Conus), inject prey with a lethal cocktail of conopeptides, small cysteine-rich peptides, each with a high affinity for its molecular target, generally an ion channel, receptor or transporter. Over the last decade, conopeptides have proven indispensable reagents for the study of vertebrate neurotransmission. Conus bullatus belongs to a clade of Conus species called Textilia, whose pharmacology is still poorly characterized. Thus the genomics analyses presented here provide the first step toward a better understanding the enigmatic Textilia clade.ResultsWe have carried out a sequencing survey of the Conus bullatus genome and venom-duct transcriptome. We find that conopeptides are highly expressed within the venom-duct, and describe an in silico pipeline for their discovery and characterization using RNA-seq data. We have also carried out low-coverage shotgun sequencing of the genome, and have used these data to determine its size, genome-wide base composition, simple repeat, and mobile element densities.ConclusionsOur results provide the first global view of venom-duct transcription in any cone snail. A notable feature of Conus bullatus venoms is the breadth of A-superfamily peptides expressed in the venom duct, which are unprecedented in their structural diversity. We also find SNP rates within conopeptides are higher compared to the remainder of C. bullatus transcriptome, consistent with the hypothesis that conopeptides are under diversifying selection.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Hu et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.