EST analysis of gene expression in the tentacle of Cyanea capillata

Jellyfish, Cyanea capillata, has an important position in head patterning and ion channel evolution, in addition to containing a rich source of toxins. In the present study, 2153 expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from the tentacle cDNA library of C. capillata were analyzed. The initial ESTs consisted of 198 clusters and 818 singletons, which revealed approximately 1016 unique genes in the data set. Among these sequences, we identified several genes related to head and foot patterning, voltage-dependent anion channel gene and genes related to biological activities of venom. Five kinds of proteinase inhibitor genes were found in jellyfish for the first time, and some of them were highly expressed with unknown functions.