Differential transcriptome analysis of Dunaliella salina during flagellar assembly

Abstract Background Eukaryotic flagellum is highly conserved in basic structure and biogenesis, and defects in ciliary assembly or function lead to a wide range of human disease symptoms. The alga Dunaliella salina (D. salina), provides an excellent model for investigating flagellar/ciliary system. However, the genomes it carries is unpublished. Results In this study, using high-throughput illumina RNA sequencing, the transcriptomes from flagella-assembling D. salina were analyzed firstly at an unprecedented depth. About 4 gigabases of raw sequence data were generated and 197,295 unigenes were annotated with gene descriptions, conserved protein domains, or gene ontology terms against public databases. Among the annotated unigenes, 25,412 unigenes were differentially expressed during flagella regeneration, including 9,988 up-regulated unigenes and 15,407 down-regulated unigenes. Moreover, to functionally categorize the D. salina unigenes, the differentially expressed unigenes distributed into the category of biological process, molecular function and cellular component. These transcriptome datasets might reveal the mechanism of flagella assembly in D. salina cells, and serve as a public information platform for D. salina functional genomics and proteomics analysis. Furthermore, the differentially expressed unigenes involved in different signaling pathways of D. salina flagella assembly and human diseases were screened respectively. Conclusion These pathway-based results not only provide a further understanding to specific processes of ciliogenesis and ciliopathies, but also offer a cue to mechanism of human diseases.