A transcriptome resource for the Antarctic pteropod Limacina helicina antarctica

The pteropod Limacina helicina antarctica is a dominant member of the zooplankton assemblage in the Antarctic marine ecosystem, and is part of a relatively simple food web in nearshore marine Antarctic waters. As a shelled pteropod, Limacina has been suggested as a candidate sentinel organism for the impacts of ocean acidification, due to the potential for shell dissolution in undersaturated waters. In this study, our goal was to develop a transcriptomic resource for Limacina that would support mechanistic studies to explore the physiological response of Limacina to abiotic stressors such as ocean acidification and ocean warming. To this end, RNA sequencing libraries were prepared from Limacina that had been exposed to a range of pH levels and an elevated temperature to maximize the diversity of expressed genes. RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) was conducted on an Illumina NextSeq500 which produced 339,000,000 150bp paired-end reads. The de novo transcriptome was produced using Trinity and annotation of the assembled transcriptome resulted in the identification of 81,229 transcripts in 137 KEGG pathways. This RNA-seq effort resulted in a transcriptome for the Antarctic pteropod, Limacina helicina antarctica, that is a major resource for an international marine science research community studying these pelagic molluscs in a global change context.