The head-regeneration transcriptome of the planarian Schmidtea mediterranea.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Planarian flatworms can regenerate their head, including a functional brain, within less than a week. Despite the enormous potential of these animals for medical research and regenerative medicine, the mechanisms of regeneration and the molecules involved remain largely unknown.

Results

To identify genes that are differentially expressed during early stages of planarian head regeneration, we generated a de novo transcriptome assembly from more than 300 million paired-end reads from planarian fragments regenerating the head at 16 different time points. The assembly yielded 26,018 putative transcripts, including very long transcripts spanning multiple genomic supercontigs, and thousands of isoforms. Using short-read data from two platforms, we analyzed dynamic gene

SUBMITTER: Sandmann T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3245616 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature