Sequoia sempervirens Transcriptome or Gene expression

Coast redwood is a very important endemic conifer timber species in the Southern Oregon and Northern California in the USA. Due to its good wood properties and fast growth it is also planted for wood production in other countries with similar climatic conditions. In general, it is a frost sensitive species, but in some countries, such as Germany, it can be also considered as a prospective timber species taking into account global warming, especially if frost tolerant clones would be used for planting. To study genetic mechanisms of frost resistance in this species we tested 17 frost sensitive and frost tolerant clones in climate control chamber experiments and generated four de novo assemblies of the coast redwood transcriptome from a pooled RNA sample using Trinity and CLC Genomic Workbench software with different filtering options. The hexaploid nature of the coast redwood genome makes it very challenging to successfully assemble and annotate the coast redwood transcriptome. The de novo transcriptome assembly generated by Trinity and based only on reads with a minimum length of 180 bp resulted in 724261 unigenes (unique contigs).