Transcriptome analysis of northern elephant seal (Mirounga angustirostris) muscle tissue provides a novel molecular resource and physiological insights.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The northern elephant seal, Mirounga angustirostris, is a valuable animal model of fasting adaptation and hypoxic stress tolerance. However, no reference sequence is currently available for this and many other marine mammal study systems, hindering molecular understanding of marine adaptations and unique physiology.

Results

We sequenced a transcriptome of M. angustirostris derived from muscle sampled during an acute stress challenge experiment to identify species-specific markers of stress axis activation and recovery. De novo assembly generated 164,966 contigs and a total of 522,699 transcripts, of which 68.70% were annotated using mouse, human, and domestic dog reference protein sequences. To reduce transcript redundancy, we removed highly similar isoforms in la

SUBMITTER: Khudyakov JI 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4328371 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature