De novo transcriptome analysis of the red seaweed Gracilaria chilensis and identification of linkers associated with phycobilisomes

Abstract

This work reports the results of the Illumina RNA-Seq of a wild population of female haploid plants of Gracilaria chilensis (Bird et al., 1986) (Rhodophyta, Gigartinalis). Most transcripts were de novo assembled in 12,331 contigs with an average length of 1756bp, showing that 96.64% of the sequences were annotated with known proteins. In particular, the identification of linker proteins of phycobilisomes (PBS) is reported. Linker proteins have primary been identified in cyanobacteria but the information available about them in eukaryotic red alga is not complete, and this is the first report in G. chilensis. This resource will also provide the basis for the study of metabolic pathways related to polysaccharide production.

Keywords: Gracilaria chilensis; Phycobilisomes; Rhodophyta; Transcriptome.