Transcriptome analysis has important applications in many biological fields. However, assembling a transcriptome without a known reference remains a challenging task requiring algorithmic improvements. We present two methods for substantially improving transcriptome de novo assembly. The first method relies on the observation that the use of a single k-mer length by current de novo assemblers i...

Seabuckthorn (Hippophaerhamnoides L.) is known for its medicinal, nutritional and environmental importance since ancient times. However, very limited efforts have been made to characterize the genome and transcriptome of this wonder plant. Here, we report the use of next generation massive parallel sequencing technology (Illumina platform) and de novo assembly to gain a comprehensive view of th...

Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is one of the most important crops cultivated worldwide. Identifying the complete transcriptome of wheat grain could serve as foundation for further study of wheat seed development. However, the relatively large size and the polyploid complexity of the genome have been substantial barriers to molecular genetics and transcriptome analysis of wheat. Alternatively, RNA...

Red Clover Transcriptome, Spatial Gene Expression Genomic resources for forage legume red clover are limited. Chakrabarti et al. report the construction of a de novo transcriptome assembly of red clover representing multiple tissue types. The transcriptome assembly was functionally annotated and transcripts encoding putative transcription factors were identified. Gene expression analysis reveal...

Analyses of high-throughput transcriptome sequences of non-model organisms are based on two main approaches: de novo assembly and genome-guided assembly using mapping to assign reads prior to assembly. Given the limits of mapping reads to a reference when it is highly divergent, as is frequently the case for non-model species, we evaluate whether using blastn would outperform mapping methods fo...

TransRate is a tool for reference-free quality assessment of de novo transcriptome assemblies. Using only the sequenced reads and the assembly as input, we show that multiple common artifacts of de novo transcriptome assembly can be readily detected. These include chimeras, structural errors, incomplete assembly, and base errors. TransRate evaluates these errors to produce a diagnostic quality ...

Silene dioica is a dioecious plant of the family Caryophyllaceae. In the present study, we used Illumina sequencing technology (MiSeq) to sequence, de novo assembly and annotate the transcriptomes of male and female copper tolerant S. dioica individuals. We sequenced the normalized mRNA of roots, shoots, flower buds and flowers for each sex. Raw reads of the transcriptome assembly project for S...

BACKGROUND De novo transcriptome assembly of short reads is now a common step in expression analysis of organisms lacking a reference genome sequence. Several software packages are available to perform this task. Even if their results are of good quality it is still possible to improve them in several ways including redundancy reduction or error correction. Trinity and Oases are two commonly us...

BACKGROUND De novo assembly of non-model organism's transcriptomes has recently been on the rise in concert with the number of de novo transcriptome assembly software programs. There is a knowledge gap as to what assembler software or k-mer strategy is best for construction of an optimal de novo assembly. Additionally, there is a lack of consensus on which evaluation metrics should be used to a...