Related Experiment Video
Updated: Nov 20, 2025
Single-Animal, Single-Tube RNA Extraction for Comparison of Relative Transcript Levels via qRT-PCR in the Tardigrade Hypsibius exemplaris
Published on: January 3, 2025
Single-molecule long-read (SMRT) transcriptome sequencing of Mercenaria mercenaria reveals a powerful anti-apoptotic
Cong Zhou1, Hao Song2, Mei-Jie Yang1
1CAS Key Laboratory of Marine Ecology and Environmental Sciences, Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao 266071, China; Laboratory for Marine Ecology and Environmental Science, Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, Qingdao 266237, China; CAS Engineering Laboratory for Marine Ranching, Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao 266071, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
Abstract:
Mercenaria mercenaria is an economically important clam species and exhibits an outstanding resistance to multiple environmental stressors. However, our understanding of their stress adaptability is limited due to a lack of genomic information, such as transcriptome resources. In this study, single-molecule long-read (SMRT) mRNA sequencing was performed to obtain the full-length gill transcriptome reference sequences of M. mercenaria under air exposure stress. In all, 14.5 G subreads were obtained and assembled into 64,603 unigenes, among which 50,613 were successfully annotated. Additionally, 56,295 SSRs, 1457 transcription factors, and 5924 lncRNAs were identified in M. mercenaria transcriptome. Furthermore, numerous apoptosis-related transcripts were identified according to Swiss-Prot annotation and their numbers were counted. We also found that most apoptosis-related transcripts exhibited typical domains of a certain protein family through conserved domain prediction. Additionally, eight typical sequences related to apoptosis pathway were detected by RT-PCR, with the aim to show the sequential variation of gene expression levels under air exposure. These results implied that the complicated apoptosis system, especially the powerful anti-apoptotic system was critical for M. mercenaria to endure air exposure.
