Transcriptome profiling and digital gene expression by deep-sequencing in normal/regenerative tissues of planarian Dugesia japonica

Planarians exhibit an extraordinary ability to regenerate lost body parts which is attributed to an abundance of pluripotent somatic stem cells called neoblasts. In this article, we report a transcriptome sequence of a Planaria subspecies Dugesia japonica derived by high-throughput sequencing. In addition, we researched transcriptome changes during different periods of regeneration by using a tag-based digital gene expression (DGE) system. Consequently, 11,913,548 transcriptome sequencing reads were obtained. Finally, these reads were eventually assembled into 37,218 unique unigenes. These assembled unigenes were annotated with various methods. Transcriptome changes during planarian regeneration were investigated by using a tag-based DGE system. We obtained a sequencing depth of more than 3.5 million tags per sample and identified a large number of differentially expressed genes at various stages of regeneration. The results provide a fairly comprehensive molecular biology background to the research on planarian development, particularly with regard to its regeneration progress.