Publication Date

2021

Journal or Book Title

Bmc Genomics

Abstract

Background: Transcriptomic data has demonstrated utility to advance the study of physiological diversity and organisms' responses to environmental stressors. However, a lack of genomic resources and challenges associated with collecting high-quality RNA can limit its application for many wild populations. Minimally invasive blood sampling combined with de novo transcriptomic approaches has great potential to alleviate these barriers. Here, we advance these goals for marine turtles by generating high quality de novo blood transcriptome assemblies to characterize functional diversity and compare global transcriptional profiles between tissues, species, and foraging aggregations.ResultsWe generated high quality blood transcriptome assemblies for hawksbill (Eretmochelys imbricata), loggerhead (Caretta caretta), green (Chelonia mydas), and leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea) turtles. The functional diversity in assembled blood transcriptomes was comparable to those from more traditionally sampled tissues. A total of 31.3% of orthogroups identified were present in all four species, representing a core set of conserved genes expressed in blood and shared across marine turtle species. We observed strong species-specific expression of these genes, as well as distinct transcriptomic profiles between green turtle foraging aggregations that inhabit areas of greater or lesser anthropogenic disturbance.ConclusionsObtaining global gene expression data through non-lethal, minimally invasive sampling can greatly expand the applications of RNA-sequencing in protected long-lived species such as marine turtles. The distinct differences in gene expression signatures between species and foraging aggregations provide insight into the functional genomics underlying the diversity in this ancient vertebrate lineage. The transcriptomic resources generated here can be used in further studies examining the evolutionary ecology and anthropogenic impacts on marine turtles.

ISSN

1471-2164

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-021-07656-5

Volume

22

Pages

1

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

License

UMass Amherst Open Access Policy

Funder

Southwest Fisheries Science Center; Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center; Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands Department of Fish and Wildlife; National Institute of Standards and TechnologyNational Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST) - USA; US Fish and Wildlife ServiceUS Fish & Wildlife Service; University of Massachusetts Amherst; NSF-IOSNational Science Foundation (NSF) [1904439]; National Research Council; Ocean Associates, Inc.

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