title: Analysis of transcriptomes of three orb-web spider species reveals gene profiles involved in silk and toxin.
abstract: As an ancient arthropod with a history of 390 million years, spiders evolved numerous morphological forms resulting from adaptation to different environments. The venom and silk of spiders, which have promising commercial applications in agriculture, medicine and engineering fields, are of special interests to researchers. However, little is known about their genomic components, which hinders not only understanding spider biology but also utilizing their valuable genes. Here we report on deep sequenced and de novo assembled transcriptomes of three orb-web spider species, Gasteracantha arcuata, Nasoonaria sinensis and Gasteracantha hasselti which are distributed in tropical forests of south China. With Illumina paired-end RNA-seq technology, 54 871, 101 855 and 75 455 unigenes for the three spider species were obtained, respectively, among which 9 300, 10 001 and 10 494 unique genes are annotated, respectively. From these annotated unigenes, we comprehensively analyzed silk and toxin gene components and structures for the three spider species. Our study provides valuable transcriptome data for three spider species which previously lacked any genetic/genomic data. The results have laid the first fundamental genomic basis for exploiting gene resources from these spiders.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming.
authors.forename: Ying-Jun
authors.initials: YJ
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.forename: Yan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zeng
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Yang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Dong
authors.forename: Wen
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002681:China; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D010802:Phylogeny; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D047011:Silk / Q000235:genetics*; D013111:Spider Venoms / Q000235:genetics*; D013112:Spiders / Q000235:genetics*; D059467:Transcriptome
chemical_list: D047011:Silk; D013111:Spider Venoms
keywords: de novo; silk protein; spider; toxin; transcriptome