Myotis myotis Transcriptome or Gene expression

The acquisition of tissue samples from wild animals is a challenging issue in the conservation biology, especially for endangered species where non-lethal sampling is the only option. Typically, for genomic and transcriptomic studies, specific tissues such as liver and brain are obtained by killing the animals as relatively large amounts of high quality RNA and DNA are needed for good assemblies. However, this sampling strategy is not an option for studies carried out over an extended period on the same individuals, such as longevity studies and studies of different developmental stages. Blood has been suggested as a potential non-lethal sample type that could be obtained from an individual year after year without deleterious effects. However, only limited quantities can be obtained from small species and it is not known if a single blood drop is representative of overall body condition. In this study we developed a non-lethal sampling method, the laboratory procedures required and a bioinfomatic pipeline to sequence the whole blood transcriptome using Illumina RNA-Seq from wild caught greater mouse-eared bats (Myotis myotis).