Developmental profiling of gene expression in embryos of the spider Parasteatoda tepidariorum

The common house spider Parasteatoda tepidariorum is a chelicerate model organism for studying developmental mechanisms and their evolution in arthropods. In contrast to the well-studied model insect, Drosophila melanogaster, embryos of the spider undergo patterning in a cellular environment from early stages (at least after the number of the nuclei increase to 16). Use of spider embryos provide new opportunities to understand the evolution of developmental mechanisms underlying arthropod body plans. This analysis aims to generate genome-scale, developmental profiles of gene expression in embryos of the spider P. tepidariorum, which facilitate a wide range of studies using this spider species. Overall design: The genome of P. tepidariorum has been sequenced, with gene models annotated (Schwager et al., 2017, BMC Biol. 15, 62). Embryonic development of P. tepidariorum has been divided into more than 10 stages (Akiyama-Oda and Oda, 2003, Development 130, 1735-1747; Mittmann and Wolff, 2012, Dev. Genes Evol. 222, 189-216). Two developmental series of mRNA (stage (st) 1, st2, st3, st4, st5 early, st5 late, st6, st7, st8, st10) were independently obtained from two pairs of parents and analyzed by RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq). Obtained reads were mapped to the genome assembly of P. tepidariorum (Ptep_1.0) and counted against AUGUSTUS gene models (Schwager et al., 2017, BMC Biol. 15, 62).