De novo assembly and comparative study of English yew (Taxus baccata) transcriptome.

English yew (Taxus baccata) is a gymnosperm of the Taxaceae family, a basal group widely known since the Jurassic period and of which today Yew is the only European representative. The wide extent of environmental heterogeneity within the species' range, together with its long presence in Europe, make English yew an ideal species to investigate adaptive evolution in conifers. To enlarge the genomic resources available for this species, we used Illumina short read sequencing followed by de novo assembly to build the transcriptome of English yew (Taxus baccata). In addition, with the objective of performing comparative analyses within the Taxus genus, we identified orthologs, tested phylogenomic relationships and detected genes potentially involved in the evolutionary adaptation of the genus worldwide.