Head kidney transcriptome analysis and characterization for the sub-antarctic notothenioid fish Eleginops maclovinus

Abstract

This study describes de novo transcriptome sequencing and annotation analyses for the head kidney of the sub-Antarctic notothenioid fish Eleginops maclovinus, a sister group of the Antarctic notothenioid fish clade. Moreover, E. maclovinus is one of the most eurythermal and euryhaline representatives of the Notothenioidei suborder. RNA-seq data were generated by the 454 GS Junior system, resulting in 11,207 contigs that were then assembled by the Genomic Workbench CLC software. The transcriptome was annotated by BLASTing each sequence against the universal, non-redundant NCBI database (National Center for Biotechnology Information) using the AUSTRAL-omics computer cluster. A significant number of transcripts related to innate and adaptive immunity were found in the sequences, which could be used as references in future immunological studies in E. maclovinus.