Loligo bleekeri testes RNA-Seq

A consistent variation in the reproductive behavior within a species isa widely recognized phenomenon across the animal kingdom. The squid,Loligo bleekeri, produce two types of males, sneaker and consort, whichare defined by an insemination mode with the female. Previously we foundthat sneaker males produce spermatozoa that are ~50% longer than consortspermatozoa (BMC Evolutionary Biology 2011, 11:236). Spermatozoa fromsneaker males also exhibit chemotactic behavior to carbon dioxide (CurrBiol. 2013, 23:775). Why and how does this species produce suchdimorphic spermatozoa remain unknown. We therefore undertook comparativedeep sequencing transcriptome (testicular RNAs) and proteome (spermproteins) analyses. Sequencing was conducted at the Beijing Genomic Institute, China. Two RNA libraries were constructed from testicular RNAs of sneaker and consort males. All libraries were sequenced through the Illumina HiSeq 2000 pipeline, the paired end libraries with read length of 95 bp. After clean up, total of 21.6G bases and 22.1 G bases of clean data was produced from sneaker and consort, respectively.