Nematode Transcriptome Shotgun Assembly

Nematodes encompass over 24,000 described species, which were discovered in almost every ecological habitat, and make up over 80% of metazoan taxonomic and functional diversity in soils. The last common ancestor of nematodes is believed to date back to 650-750 million years, generating a large and phylogenetically diverse group to be explored. However, high quality gene annotations are incomprehensive or missing for most species. Combining short-read RNA sequencing with mass spectrometry-based proteomics in an approach called proteotranscriptomics, we improve gene annotations for 9 genome-sequenced species and provide gene annotations for 3 additional species without genome assemblies, enabling systems analysis and new insights into evolutionary processes in nematodes.