Data from: First insights into the giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) blood transcriptome: a resource for novel gene loci and immunogenetics

The giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) is one of the most famous
flagship species for conservation, and its draft genome has recently been
assembled. However, the transcriptome is not yet available. In this study,
the blood transcriptomes of three pandas were characterized and about 160
million sequencing reads were generated using Illumina HiSeq 2000
paired-end sequencing technology. The assembly yielded 92 598 transcripts
with an average length of 1626 bp and N50 length of 2842 bp. Based on a
sequence similarity search against nonredundant (nr) protein database, a
total of 38 522 (41.6%) transcripts were annotated. Of these annotated
transcripts, 25 142 and 8272 transcripts were assigned to gene ontology
terms and clusters of orthologous group, respectively. A search against
the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes Pathway database (KEGG)
indicated that 9098 (9.83%) transcripts mapped to 324 KEGG pathways, and
the best represented functional categories of pathways were signal
transduction and immune system. We have also identified 23 460
microsatellites, 43 560 SNPs as well as 21 456 alternative splicing events
in the assembly. Additionally, a total of 24 341 complete open reading
frames (ORFs) were detected from the assembly where 1492 ORFs were found
to be novel gene loci as these have not been annotated so far in any
public database.