Data from: Transcriptome resources for the perennial sunflower Helianthus maximiliani obtained from ecologically divergent populations

Next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies provide a rapid means to
generate genomic resources for species exhibiting interesting ecological
and evolutionary variation but for which such resources are scant or
nonexistent. In the current report, we utilize 454 pyrosequencing to
obtain transcriptome information for multiple individuals and tissue types
from geographically disparate and ecologically differentiated populations
of the perennial sunflower species Helianthus maximiliani. A total of
850,275 raw reads were obtained averaging 355 bp in length. Reads were
assembled, post processing, into 16,681 unique contigs with an N50 of 898
bp and a total length of 13.6 Mb. A majority (67%) of these contigs were
annotated based on comparison to the Arabidopsis thaliana genome (TAIR10).
Contigs were identified that exhibit high similarity to genes associated
with natural variation in flowering time and freezing tolerance in other
plant species and will facilitate future studies aimed at elucidating the
molecular basis of clinal life history variation and adaptive
differentiation in H. maximiliani. Large numbers of gene-associated simple
sequence repeats (SSRs) and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) also
were identified that can be deployed in mapping and population genomic
analyses.