Transcriptome profiling of red swamp crayfish (Procambarus clarkii) hepatopancreas in response to lipopolysaccharide (LPS) infection

The RNA-sequencing followed by de novo assembly generated 61,912 unigene sequences of P. clarkii hepatopancreas. Comparison of gene expression between LPS challenged and PBS control samples revealed 2552 differentially expressed genes (DEGs). Of these sequences, 1162 DEGs were differentially up-regulated and 1360 DEGs differentially down-regulated. The DEGs were then annotated against gene ontology (GO) database and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) database. Some immune-related pathways such as PPAR signaling pathway, lysosome, Chemical carcinogenesis, Peroxisome were predicted by canonical pathways analysis. The reliability of transcriptome data was validated by quantitative real time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) for the selected genes. The data presented here shed light into antibacterial immune responses of crayfish. In addition, these results suggest that transcriptomic data provides valuable sequence resource for immune-related gene identification and helps to understand P. clarkii immune functions.