The brain transcriptome of the wolf spider, Schizocosa ocreata

The goal of this study was to lay the groundwork for comparative transcriptomics of sex differences in the brain of wolf spiders, a non-model organism of the pyhlum Euarthropoda, by generating transcriptomes and analyzing gene expression. To examine differences in sex-differential gene expression, short read transcript sequencing and de novo transcriptome assembly were performed. Messenger RNA (mRNA) was isolated from dissected brain tissue of male and female subadult and mature wolf spiders (Schizocosa ocreata). The data consist of short read sequences for the two different life stages in each sex. Computational analyses on these data include de novo transcriptome assembly, using Trinity and CAP3 assembly suites, and differential expression analysis using the edgeR package. Sample-specific and combined transcriptomes, gene annotations, and differential expression results are described in this data note and are available from associated database submissions.