Transcriptome of the Antarctic amphipod Gondogeneia antarctica and its response to pollutant exposure

Abstract

<em>Gondogeneia antarctica</em> is widely distributed off the western Antarctic Peninsula and is a key species in the Antarctic food web. In this study, we performed Illumina sequencing to produce a total of 4,599,079,601 (4.6 Gb) nucleotides and a comprehensive transcript dataset for <em>G. antarctica</em>. Over 46 million total reads were assembled into 20,749 contigs, and 12,461 annotated genes were predicted by Blastx. The RNA-seq results after exposure to three pollutants showed that 658, 169 and 367 genes that were potential biomarkers of responses to pollutants for this species were specifically upregulated after exposure to PCBs (Polychlorinated biphenyls), PFOS (Perfluorooctanesulfonic acid) and PFOA (Perfluorooctanoic acid), respectively. These data represent the first transcriptome resource for the Antarctic amphipod G. antarctica and provide a useful resource for studying Antarctic marine species.