PRJNA762483
Optimization and application of non-native Phragmites australis transcriptome assemblies
Phragmites australis (common reed) has a cosmopolitan distribution and has been suggested as a model organism for the study of invasive plant species. In North America, the non-native subspecies is widely distributed across the contiguous 48 states in the United States and large parts of Canada. Even though millions of dollars are spent annually on Phragmites management, insufficient knowledge on P. australis impeded the efficiency of management. To solve this problem, transcriptomic information generated from multiple types of tissue could be a valuable resource for future studies. We constructed forty-nine P. australis transcriptomes via different assembly tools and multiple parameter settings. The optimal transcriptome for functional annotation and downstream analyses was selected among these transcriptomes by comprehensive assessments. For a total of 422,589 transcripts assembled in this transcriptome, 319,046 transcripts (75.5%) have at least one functional annotation. Within the transcriptome, we further identified 1,495 transcripts showing tissue-specific expression pattern, 10,828 putative transcription factors, and 72,165 simple sequence repeats markers. The identification and analyses of predicted transcripts related to herbicide- and salinity-resistant genes were shown as two applications of the transcriptomic information to facilitate further research on P. australis. Transcriptome assemblies and selection would be important for the transcriptome annotation. With this optimal transcriptome and all relative information from downstream analyses, foundations for future studies on the mechanisms underlying the invasiveness of non-native P. australis were laid.