Transcriptome sequencing and comparative expression profiling analysis of Saccharina japonica under blue light

Saccharina japonica is one of the most important marine economic crops worldwide. Blue light usually plays a significant role in the lives of Saccharina that may be beneficial to the culture system. Here we applied high-throughput paired-end RNA-sequencing (RNA-Seq) to the transcriptome of Saccharina japonica with blue light and dark exposure respectively. Comparative analysis of gene expression was conducted to understand the underlying molecular mechanisms. RNA-seq analysis yielded 70,497 non-redundant unigenes. 25,924 unigenes of them had good comparability with known gene sequences in existing species. Based on the values of RPKM, 11,660 differentially expressed unigenes were detected in expression profiles between blue light and dark exposed samples. Our results provide clues to potential genes identification in the species and lay the foundation for future functional genomics study. Overall design: mRNA expression of Saccharina japonica with 2 different treatment (sample exposed to Dark condition, and sample exposed to blue light respectively) was determined by method of RNA-Seq