Giardia lamblia Transcriptome Analysis Using TSS-Seq and RNA-Seq

Giardia lamblia is a protozoan parasite that is found worldwide and has both medical and veterinary importance. We applied the transcription start sequence (TSS-seq) and RNA sequence (RNA-seq) techniques to study the transcriptome of the assemblage A WB strain trophozoite. We identified 8000 transcription regions (TR) with significant transcription. Of these regions, 1881 TRs were more than 500 nucleotides upstream of an annotated ORF. Combining both techniques helped us to identify 24 ORFs that should be re-annotated and 60 new ORFs. From the 8000 TRs, we were able to identify an AT-rich consensus that includes the transcription initiation site. It is possible that transcription that was previously thought to be bidirectional is actually unidirectional.