Transcriptome analysis of Osedax japonicus

Bone-eating worm of the genus Osedax is recently discovered deep-sea polychaete belonging to the family Siboglinidae. Osedax exclusively inhabits sunken whale bones and has assumed to consume the bones using the root, which is an evolutionary novel organ of Osedax. Previous studies have suggested that the root tissue secretes enzymes to digest the vertebrate bones, however, molecular nature of the enzymes is still unclear. To address the issue, we sequenced three RNA samples of Osedax japonicus using an Illumina HiSeq2000 sequencer.