CoralTBase

CoralTBase provides comprehensive transcriptome data for 14 scleractinian coral species to support molecular studies of coral biology, stress responses, and adaptation.

Key Features:

• Species coverage: Transcriptomes for 14 common scleractinian coral species, including reef-building taxa from the South China Sea.
• Sequencing: High-throughput RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) generated 7.4–12.0 gigabases of sequence reads per species.
• De novo assembly: Assemblies produced 271,000–762,000 contigs per species with N50 values of 629–1,427 base pairs.
• Unigenes and ORFs: Assemblies yielded 66,000–114,000 unigenes per species with predicted open reading frames (ORFs).
• Functional annotation: Between 74.3% and 80.5% of unigenes were functionally annotated.
• Taxonomic assignment of matches: Tubastraea coccinea showed 41.5% of unigenes with best-hit coral sequences; the other thirteen species had 20.2%–48.9% coral matches and 28.3%–51.6% matches to Symbiodinaceae sequences.
• Search and comparison tools: Includes BLAST-based best-hit comparisons and keyword-based queries for unigenes and functional terms.

Scientific Applications:

• Functional studies: Elucidation of molecular mechanisms underlying coral stress responses and adaptation strategies.
• Comparative transcriptomics: Cross-species transcriptomic comparisons among scleractinian corals and more distantly related cnidarians.
• Symbiosis research: Investigation of coral–Symbiodinaceae interactions using sequence matches to Symbiodinaceae.
• Conservation and ecology: Genomic resources to support studies of coral biology, ecology, and conservation in the context of environmental change.

Methodology:

High-throughput RNA sequencing (RNA-seq), de novo assembly of reads into contigs and unigenes, prediction of open reading frames (ORFs), functional annotation, and best-hit sequence comparisons (e.g., BLAST).