De novo transcriptome assembly of Clitoria ternatea flowers

The Clitoria ternate flowers are widely used for its anthocyanin pigmentation. However, the flowers' colour ranges from white to light blue to deep blue, purple or even pink. The butterfly pea flower colours are known to be influenced by variety and not environmental factors. Despite its interest there is a lack of understanding of the level of gene expression between varieties, in producing blue and white butterfly pea flowers. Hence, transcriptome assembly of genes expressed in different butterfly pea flowers and subsequent understanding of the key genes will help in increasing the pigments accordingly.

An RNA library was generated from RNA extracted from three different sources of flower petals as in white, light blue and dark blue butterfly pea flowers and sequenced using the Illumina HiSeq Platform. These data sets were then used to produce and assemble the first transcriptome assembly based on Clitoria ternate or commonly known as butterfly pea, paving way for anthocyanin related gene identification.