De novo transcriptome analysis of the Indian squid Uroteuthis duvaucelii (Orbigny, 1848) from the Indian Ocean

Cephalopods have dominated the oceans for hundreds of millions of years and are unquestionably at the peak of molluscan evolution. The development of the large brain and a well-sophisticated sensory system contributed significantly to its success. Therefore, it is considered the best example of convergent evolution and attracted the attention of scientists from various disciplines of biology. The aim of the present study is to construct a reference transcriptome in the Indian squid Uroteuthis duvaucelii to gain insights into cephalopod evolution and enrich the existing cephalopod database. Around 72 million short Illumina reads were generated from five different tissues, including the brain, eye, gill, heart and gonads, and assembled using the Trinity assembler. About 26230 protein-coding sequences were annotated from the assembled transcripts. The BUSCO completeness of the assembly was 71.71% compared to the Mollusca_Odb10 gene set. KEGG and REACTOME pathway analyzes revealed that U. duvaucelii shares many genes and pathways with higher vertebrates.