Generic sample from Colinus virginianus
Colinus virginianus
We utilized high throughput sequencing of a multi-tissue cDNA library to extensively characterize the transcriptome of Northern bobwhite quail. Sequencing of the normalized cDNA library constructed from RNA pooled from Northern bobwhite brain, liver, testes, duodenum, colon and feather pulp tissues yielded 114.9 megabases of sequence in 478,142 reads with an average read length of 240 bp and approximately 95% of the total sequence read lengths distributed between 200 and 300 bp.  A total of 82,064 unique sequences were identified comprised of 37,685 contigs and 44,379 singlets after vector cleaning, adapter and polyA tract removal, and sequence assembly with the program CAP3.  Nearly 64.4% and 19.8% of the contigs were comprised of greater than two and nine ESTs respectively.  Contigs and singlets having length greater than 200 bp, totaling 71,384 unigenes, were selected for further analysis and annotation. The average length of the assembled contigs was 500bp (min = 202 bp, max = 6524 bp, and stdev = 403).  The number of transcripts having significant matches to known or postulated protein sequences, where Blast expectation scores (E) were = 10-5, was 39.2% of contigs (14,081 out of 35,904) and 22% (7,831 out of 35,480) of singlets.