Tammar wallaby thymus transcriptomes (dataset)

The thymus plays a critical role in the development and maturation of T-cells. Humans have a single thoracic thymus and presence of a second thymus is considered an anomaly. However, many vertebrates have multiple thymuses. The tammar wallaby has two thymuses: a thoracic thymus (typically found in all mammals) and a dominant cervical thymus.At the time of data collection in 2011, no genome-wide research had been carried out into the possible functional differences between the two thymuses. The tammar wallaby transcriptome data set allows comparison of the gene expression in the thoracic and cervical thymic tissues.The researchers used pyrosequencing to compare the transcriptomes of a cervical and thoracic thymus from a single 178 day old tammar wallaby.RNA from cervical and thoracic thymic tissues from a 178-day-old tammar wallaby pouch young was extracted by Marylin B Renfree at the University of Melbourne.  The tissue was pyrosequenced by Richard A Gibbs (Baylor College of Medicine) using the Roche 454 platform. 758,062 reads with an average read length of 184 bases were generated. Data analysis was undertaken primarily by Emily SW Wong and Katherine Belov at the University of Sydney.  For a full list of contributors to the tammar wallaby transcriptomes dataset, please refer to the associated publication.