Oenanthe oenanthe, reference transcriptome

In order to understand the migratory phenotype of a long-distance migrant, the Northern Wheatear (Oenanthe oenanthe), in terms of genetics, gene expression, biochemistry and physiology, we have established a partial transcriptome from sequence data (RNASeq) generated via the Roche GS FLX System. The transcriptome was constructed de novo from pooled mRNA of six organs of nine birds: brain, muscle, intestine, liver, adipose tissue and skin. All individuals were captive birds, hybrids from O. o. Leucorhoa and O. o.seebohmi, and the samples were collected at three different time points before the onset of migration. We estimate the total number of genes in 15,640 (17,539 isogroups and 21,982 isotigs), ~66% of them could be annotated using Turkey and Zebra Finch genomes, or protein sequence information from Swissprot and NCBI databases. Around 13% of the isogroups have a putative splicing variant, most of them just a second alternative.