De novo transcriptomic profile in the gonadal tissues of the intertidal whelk Reishia clavigera

The intertidal whelk Reishia clavigera (formerly named as Thais clavigera) is one of the most sensitive species to organotin-associated imposex. However, the limited information on mRNA transcriptome of the species has restricted the molecular investigation on such endocrine disruption. By means of Illumina sequencing, we obtained a global de novo transcriptome from the gonadal tissues of both male and female R. clavigera, with 197,324 assembled transcripts and 151,684 condensed non-redundant transcripts. Blast hit results from the NCBI's non-redundant molluscan database showed that 28,948 transcripts were successfully annotated with significant matches at an e-value of ⩽1e−6. Among them, 1108 transcripts were assigned a well-defined gene ontology term. As the first transcriptomic study on the gonadal tissues of R. clavigera, this study has enhanced the information of mRNA transcriptome on this species and will thus facilitate mechanistic studies of chemical contaminants (e.g., organotins) on this common biomonitor species.