Studies on the transcriptomes of non-model organisms

Abstract

The transcriptome represents the whole complement of RNA transcripts in cells or tissues and reflects the expressed genes at various life stages, tissue types, physiological states, and environmental conditions. Transcriptome analysis provides a comprehensive understanding of gene expression and its regulation. Non-model organism has many interesting traits of which model organisms lack, and the study of its transcriptome has great significance in solving the questions of genetic evolution, genetic breeding, ecology and so on. Because of absence of reference genome information, and traditional transcriptome research methods which are complicated to operate, long experimental period and costly, slow progress has been made in the research of non-model organism transcriptome. Fortunately, RNA sequencing (RNA-seq), the next-generation sequencing technology, has completely changed the way of transcriptome study, becoming an advanced technology on the investigation of non-model organism transcriptome. In this paper, we give a summary of the non-model organism transcriptome research using RNA-seq in recent years and briefly describe its general flow and principles from aspects of sample preparation, high throughput DNA sequencing, and bioinformatics analysis. Finally, questions that are still open and awaiting further research are also discussed.