Generation and analysis of a 29,745 unique Expressed Sequence Tags from the Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas) assembled into a publicly accessible database: the GigasDatabase

Abstract

Background: Although bivalves are among the most-studied marine organisms because of their ecological role and economic importance, very little information is available on the genome sequences of oyster species. This report documents three large-scale cDNA sequencing projects for the Pacific oyster Crassostrea gigas initiated to provide a large number of expressed sequence tags that were subsequently compiled in a publicly accessible database. This resource allowed for the identification of a large number of transcripts and provides valuable information for ongoing investigations of tissue-specific and stimulus-dependant gene expression patterns. These data are crucial for constructing comprehensive DNA microarrays, identifying single nucleotide polymorphisms and microsatellites in coding regions, and for identifying genes when the entire genome sequence of C. gigas becomes available.

Description: In the present paper, we report the production of 40,845 high-quality ESTs that identify 29,745 unique transcribed sequences consisting of 7,940 contigs and 21,805 singletons. All of these new sequences, together with existing public sequence data, have been compiled into a publicly-available Website http://public-contigbrowser.sigenae.org:9090/Crassostrea_gigas/index.html. Approximately 43% of the unique ESTs had significant matches against the SwissProt database and 27% were annotated using Gene Ontology terms. In addition, we identified a total of 208 in silico microsatellites from the ESTs, with 173 having sufficient flanking sequence for primer design. We also identified a total of 7,530 putative in silico, single-nucleotide polymorphisms using existing and newly-generated EST resources for the Pacific oyster.

Conclusion: A publicly-available database has been populated with 29,745 unique sequences for the Pacific oyster Crassostrea gigas. The database provides many tools to search cleaned and assembled ESTs. The user may input and submit several filters, such as protein or nucleotide hits, to select and download relevant elements. This database constitutes one of the most developed genomic resources accessible among Lophotrochozoans, an orphan clade of bilateral animals. These data will accelerate the development of both genomics and genetics in a commercially-important species with the highest annual, commercial production of any aquatic organism.

Figure 1

Processing chain of the GigasDatabase. The data resources of the GigasDatabase includes cleaning processes, batch statistics, assembling sequences into contigs, annotation of the contigs, visualization of the contigs, and summary statistics concerning each library.

Figure 2

Graphical view of the contig by "ContigView" available in GigasDatabase. The ContigView screen gives a graphical overview of the contig structure. Each sequence is represented as a line, and colors indicate the type of sequence. The first level corresponds to the sequence fragment overview. The second level is the detailed view of the individual sequences belonging to the contig. The red frame represents the visualized section on the third level. The third level is the base-pair view of the DNA contigs.

Figure 3

Filter page available with BioMart in GigasDatabase. Filter criteria are deposited in blocks. The name is in the upper left corner of the block, and this section contains a list of elements that can be used for selection, corresponding to one table in the database structure. The filter criteria can be based upon contigs, EST and mRNA, clones, protein hits, nucleotide hits, genomic hits, expression, keywords, gene ontology, repeats, and SNP.

Figure 4

Output page available with BioMart in GigasDatabase. Once the filters have been selected, it is possible to select elements for output. For example, best SwissProt (SP) description, best SP hit score, or best SP hit E-value can be exported in several output formats (HTML, Text, MS Excel).