De Novo Assembly and Annotation of Microalga Tetradesmus obliquus Transcriptome

Tetradesmus obliquus is a unicellular green microalga and considered as a potential source for biotechnological production of pigments such as lutein. No genome-related data is available for T. obliquus that would increase the ability to develop new approaches in biotechnological applications. We present the first transcriptome data for T. obliquus. The aim of this study is to provide a comprehensive transcriptome annotation and identification of conserved genes involved in lutein pigment biosynthesis in Tetradesmus obliquus cells by analyzing pooled RNA-Seq data. Next-Generation Sequencing was applied for the pooled cDNAs library prepared by combining the cell cultures collected from samples exposed to dark and high light intensity conditions. Transcripts were assembled by the de novo assembly approach. Trinotate software was used for functional annotation of assembled transcripts. We also carried out BLAST analysis comparing the transcriptome data against known lutein biosynthesis genes. The 49.15% of the assembled sequences were functionally annotated, providing a total of 21490 unigenes. Our data also revealed the transcript sequences for ten conserved genes required for lutein biosynthesis. The data produced in this study can be used for molecular approaches in biotechnological applications related to T. obliquus, such as increasing the yield of pigment production.