De novo assembly and functional annotation of the heart + hemolymph transcriptome in the Caribbean spiny lobster Panulirus argus

Abstract

The spiny lobster, Panulirus argus, is an ecologically relevant species in shallow water coral reefs and a target of the most lucrative fishery in the greater Caribbean region. This study reports, for the first time, the heart + hemolymph transcriptome of the Caribbean spiny lobster Panulirus argus assembled from short Illumina 150bp PE raw reads. A total of 80,152,094 raw reads were assembled using the Oyster River Protocol pipeline. The assembly resulted in a total of 254,773 transcripts. Functional gene annotation was conducted using the software package 'dammit'. Lastly, gene enrichment analyses were conducted using the Gene Ontology (GO) and KEGG pathway (Kaas) databases. This resource will be of utmost importance in future research aiming at exploring the effect of local and regional anthropogenic disturbances, as well as global climate change on the molecular physiology of this overexploited species.