Illumina strand-specific RNA-Seq of  Cynara cardunculus var. altilis: Closed capitulum stage 1, biological replicate 2, 2x125 bp, IS =  230 bp
Library preparation and sequencing was outsourced (Eurofins GmbH) where for each sample, approximately 1g of total RNA were used for library preparation applying a strand-specific cDNA libraries synthesis kit (New England Biolabs). The mRNA was selected with a polyA capturing method, fragmented, ligated with adapters and amplified (Zhong et al., 2011). Samples from each library were pooled equimolar and paired-end (PE) sequenced using HiSeq2500 (Illumina Technologies) platform with chemistry v4 applying the high-output run mode.