De novo transcriptome assembly of hemocytes from Haliotis discus hannai following poly(I:C) stimulation

Haliotis discus hannai, a primary aquaculture species in East Asia, is highly susceptible to viral infections, such as abalone herpesvirus. To facilitate the understanding of antiviral immune mechanisms, we generated a hemocyte transcriptome dataset following stimulation with Polyinosinic: polycytidylic acid (poly[I: C]), a synthetic analog of viral double-stranded RNA. This dataset offers a molecular basis for assessing immune-related genes and pathways in abalone.

Adult abalones were injected with poly(I:C), and hemocytes were collected at 2 and 7 days post-infection, along with uninfected controls. Total RNA was extracted and sequenced using the Illumina paired-end platform. After quality filtering, de novo assembly with Trinity produced 281,050 transcripts and 214,676 unigenes (N50: 722 bp and GC content: 41.06%). Open reading frames predicted by TransDecoder yielded 18,371 coding sequences. Functional annotation against Non-Redundant Protein, Universal Protein Resource, Protein Families, Gene Ontology, and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes databases identified numerous immune-related genes The raw reads, assembled transcriptome, and annotation files are publicly available in the National Center for Biotechnology Information Sequence Read Archive and Figshare, providing a valuable reference for future studies on the innate immunity of H. discus hannai.