Unio elongatulus isolate:BIV10776 Raw sequence reads
Being the animal group with the highest rate of extinctions (6.3%) and one of the most imperilled taxa (~43% threatened species), freshwater mussels of the order Unionida have become a global conservation concern. When applied to the study of non-model organisms, genomic methods provide highly informative tools to enhance the success of conservation efforts. Nevertheless, for many groups of non-model organisms, the availability of genomic resources is still scarce. This is the case of freshwater mussels, for which nearly a thousand known species are known, yet only six whole genome assemblies and fewer than 20 transcriptomes are available to study this group. Here we present a highly complete multi-tissue transcriptome assembly for one of the most understudied freshwater mussels in Europe, Unio elongatulus C. Pfeiffer, 1825. Additionally, we provide a well-annotated panel of tissue-specific Relative Gene Expression profiles, using the individual sequencing outputs of the eight functionally representative tissues, i.e., adductor muscle, foot, gill, gonad, gut, hepatopancreas, mantle and palps. Taken together, the resources provided here represent a key tool to explore and decipher many biological and ecological aspects of this species, which in turn will help to understand its vulnerability to current and future threats, as well as understand the evolutionary patterns of European freshwater mussels.