Data from: Understanding the genomic basis of adaptive response to variable osmotic niches in freshwater prawns: a comparative intraspecific RNA-Seq analysis of Macrobrachium australiense

Understanding the molecular basis of adaptive response to variable
environmental conditions is a central goal of evolutionary biology. Here
we sought to identify potential outlier SNPs (single nucleotide
polymorphisms) in three wild populations of a freshwater prawn
(Macrobrachium australiense) that are exposed to differing osmotic niches
by using a comparative transcriptomics approach. De novo assembly of
approximately 542 million (75 nt) pair end reads collected from 10
individuals revealed 123,396 longer contigs/transcripts of variable
length, that showed 97.38% transcriptome assembly completeness.
Differential gene expression (DGE) analysis of major osmoregulatory genes
revealed that Calreticulin, Na+/H+ exchanger and V-type (H+) ATPase showed
the highest expression levels in the Blunder Creek (low ionic) population,
while Crustacean cardiovascular peptide (CCP), Na+/K+-ATPase, Na+/K+/2Cl-
Co-transporter (NKCC) and Na+/HCO3 exchanger showed the highest expression
levels in the Bulimba Creek (higher ionic) population. In total, 16 gene
ontology (GO) term categories were functionally enriched among the three
studied populations. We identified 4144 raw and 835 high quality filtered
SNPs in the three M. australiense populations, of which 84 SNPs were
identified as outliers. Outliers were detected in 4 important
osmoregulatory genes that include: Calreticulin, Na+/H+ exchanger,
Na+/K+-ATPase and V-type-(H+)-ATPase. All outliers in the osmoregulatory
genes were located in non-coding regulatory regions (untranslated regions,
UTRs) of the gene. We hypothesize that the outlier SNPs identified here in
M. australiense populations exposed naturally to different osmotic
conditions influence specific gene expression patterns that allow
individuals to respond to local environmental conditions.