Transcriptome profiling of developmental and xenobiotic responses in a keystone soil animal, the oligochaete annelid Lumbricus rubellus.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Natural contamination and anthropogenic pollution of soils are likely to be major determinants of functioning and survival of keystone invertebrate taxa. Soil animals will have both evolutionary adaptation and genetically programmed responses to these toxic chemicals, but mechanistic understanding of such is sparse. The clitellate annelid Lumbricus rubellus is a model organism for soil health testing, but genetic data have been lacking.

Results

We generated a 17,000 sequence expressed sequence tag dataset, defining ~8,100 different putative genes, and built an 8,000-element transcriptome microarray for L. rubellus. Strikingly, less than half the putative genes (43%) were assigned annotations from the gene ontology (GO) system; this reflects the phylogenetic unique

SUBMITTER: Owen J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2440553 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature