Transcriptome profiling and co-expression network analysis of 96 Haematococcus pluvialis samples

Haematococcus pluvialis is a microalga known for producing the red carotenoid, astaxanthin. Key research areas to improve productivity include optimizing vegetative biomass, enhancing astaxanthin content, and controlling secondary cell wall formation. In this study, RNA-seq was conducted on 96 H. pluvialis samples under various treatments and time points, generating 96.7 GB of high-quality data (2,080,511,173 clean reads, quality score > 30). Gene expression was quantified as transcripts per million (TPM), and genes with similar expression patterns were clustered. A co-expression network, constructed with a soft threshold of β = 7 (R² > 0.9), identified 39 co-expression modules, each averaging 732 genes. Additionally, the re-annotation process provided functional descriptions for 8,598 previously uncharacterized genes. Gene functional classification analysis revealed their involvement in metabolic pathways related to genetic information processing and primary/secondary metabolite metabolism. This dataset provides a valuable resource for exploring the molecular mechanisms involved in critical processes such as growth regulation, astaxanthin accumulation, and secondary cell wall synthesis in H. pluvialis.