Full-length transcriptome of Apis cerana

As one of the important species within the genus Apis, the Asian honey bee (Apis cerana) plays a crucial role in providing abundant bee products and maintaining ecological balance. Despite the availability of the Asian honey bee's genomic sequence, its transcriptome information remains incomplete. In this study, we constructed three pooled RNA samples from the queen, drone, and worker bees of A. cerana and performed full-length transcriptome sequencing using Nanopore single-molecule sequencing technology. Ultimately, we obtained 160,811 full-length transcript sequences from 19,859 genes, of these, 19622 transcripts were detected from known genes and 141189 were novel transcripts. Among these transcripts, we identified 38799 alternative splicing (AS) events, 44243 APA events at 1649 gene loci, and 17,387 long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs). Our research results provide a comprehensive set of reference transcripts for the Apis cerana, offering important sequence information for further investigation into the genetic functions of Apis cerana.