title: Spatial transcriptome of Cucurbita pepo seed coat at 15 days after pollination
design: Seed coat tissues of Cucurbita pepo were collected at 10 and 15 days after pollination (DAP). Samples were immediately embedded in optimal cutting temperature (OCT) compound and frozen in liquid nitrogen. Tissue sections were cut using a cryostat at a thickness suitable for spatial transcriptomics and mounted onto specialized spatial capture slides. RNA quality was assessed before library preparation. Spatial transcriptome libraries were constructed using the Visium Spatial Gene Expression protocol (10x Genomics) following the manufacturers instructions. Library quality and concentration were evaluated using a Bioanalyzer and Qubit fluorometer. Sequencing was performed on an Illumina NovaSeq X Plus platform to generate paired-end reads for transcriptome profiling and spatial gene expression analysis.