Gene discovery in the finger leather coral Sinularia notanda by construction and sequencing of a normalized cDNA libary

The transplantation of coral fragments is one of methods that restore coral communities. To form coral colonies, the fragmented corals initiated skeletal extension from the cut-edge of fragment then success the settlement. In order to understand the molecular events underlying fragment adhesion and settlement, we constructed a normalized cDNA library and generated and annotated expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from the fragmented adult polyps of soft coral Sinularia notanda. We generated 3251 high-quality ESTs with an average length of 580 bp and the EST cluster and assembly analyses produced 2796 unigenes, including 2487 singletons and 309 contigs. Of the known genes, 55 genes were selected to be involved in polyp fragment adhesion and settlement based on Gene Ontology (GO) classification. Notably, two EST clones were identified to show homology with galaxin gene which was demonstrated as coral specific calcifying protein of organic matrix. These EST sequences can provide utility as molecular markers in molecular and genetic studies of S. notanda and other soft coral.