De-novo transcriptome analysis of the banana shrimp (Fenneropenaeus merguiensis) and identification of genes associated with reproduction and development

The banana shrimp Fenneropenaeus merguiensis is a commercially important marine crustacean for world aquaculture and fisheries. Despite this, limited genetic information is available for it and many other penaeid shrimp species. Here we present the first in-depth analysis of the transcriptional content of 8 different tissues from the banana shrimp using RNA-Seq technologies. A total of over 1 million single-end and over 49 million paired-end reads were obtained from Roche 454FLX and illumina sequencing platforms, respectively, resulting in an assembly of 124,631 transcripts with an N50 of 1,332 and mean length of 514 nt. A total of 59,179 putative protein sequences obtained from the assembled transcripts were annotated using public protein sequence databases and assigned 20,430 BLAST hits, 16,866 GO terms and 13,304 KOG categories. Further analysis revealed a rich set of transcript sequences exhibiting homology with genes associated with reproduction, sex determination and development and distinguished the tissues responsible for this expression. This report adds a substantial contribution to the sequence data currently available for F. merguiensis, providing valuable resources for further research.