Mytilus galloprovincialis Transcriptome or Gene expression

Mediterranean mussels (Mytilus galloprovincialis) are sessile filter feeders that live in a close contact with numerous marine microorganisms. As all invertebrates, they lack an adaptive immune response but it has been reported that invertebrates may respond to an infection involving a high degree of pathogen specificity and innate immune memory or “priming”.To study this phenomenon we conducted Illumina sequencing of the mussel hemocytes transcriptome before and after Vibrio splendidus infection: triplicates of samplings at time 0, 24 hours after a first infection, and 24 hours and 7 days after a second infection. About 70 million raw reads were obtained from each sample, which were assembled into more than 200,000 contigs.Altogether, our results revealed not only a reprograming in gene expression, confirmed by functional approaches, but also in the humoral and cellular response to Vibrio splendidus.