Long-Read Sequencing of Chicken Transcripts and Identification of New Transcript Isoforms

The chicken has long served as an important model organism in many fields, and continues to aid our understanding of animal development. Functional genomics studies aimed at probing the mechanisms that regulate development require high-quality genomes and transcript annotations. The quality of these resources has improved dramatically over the last several years, but many isoforms and genes have yet to be identified. We hope to contribute to the process of improving these resources with the data presented here: a set of long cDNA sequencing reads, and a curated set of new genes and transcript isoforms not currently represented in the most up-to-date genome annotation currently available to the community of researchers who rely on the chicken genome.

长期以来，鸡作为重要的模式生物（model organism）被广泛应用于诸多研究领域，至今仍持续助力我们深化对动物发育机制的认知。旨在探究发育调控机制的功能基因组学研究，亟需高质量的基因组与转录本注释（transcript annotations）资源。近年来，此类资源的质量已有显著提升，但仍有大量转录本亚型（isoforms）与基因尚未被鉴定发现。本研究通过本次公布的数据集，旨在为优化此类资源贡献力量：本次数据包含一套长链互补DNA（cDNA）测序读段（reads），以及一套经人工整理验证的新基因与转录本亚型集合——这些序列目前尚未被收录于当前鸡基因组研究人员社区所使用的最新版基因组注释中。