Characterization of the Conus bullatus genome and its venom-duct transcriptome

• Published in: BMC genomics Vol. 12; no. 1; p. 60
• Main Authors: Hu, Hao, Bandyopadhyay, Pradip K, Olivera, Baldomero M, Yandell, Mark
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London BioMed Central 25.01.2011; BioMed Central Ltd; BMC
• Subjects: Amino acids; Animal Genetics and Genomics; Animals; Base Composition - genetics; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Cone snails; Conus Snail - genetics; Gene Expression Profiling; Genetic aspects; Genome - genetics; Genomes; Genomics; Life Sciences; Microarrays; Microbial Genetics and Genomics; Molecular Sequence Annotation; Mollusk Venoms - genetics; Multicellular invertebrate genomics; Peptides; Peptides - genetics; Pharmacology; Physiological aspects; Plant Genetics and Genomics; Proteomics; Reagents; Research Article; RNA; Single nucleotide polymorphisms; Software; Studies; Venom; United States; Ziconotide; Transcriptome Assembly; Estimate Genome Size; Simple Repeat; Repeat Content
• ISSN: 1471-2164; 1471-2164
• DOI: 10.1186/1471-2164-12-60

Background The venomous marine gastropods, cone snails (genus Conus ), inject prey with a lethal cocktail of conopeptides, small cysteine-rich peptides, each with a high affinity for its molecular target, generally an ion channel, receptor or transporter. Over the last decade, conopeptides have proven indispensable reagents for the study of vertebrate neurotransmission. Conus bullatus belongs to a clade of Conus species called Textilia , whose pharmacology is still poorly characterized. Thus the genomics analyses presented here provide the first step toward a better understanding the enigmatic Textilia clade. Results We have carried out a sequencing survey of the Conus bullatus genome and venom-duct transcriptome. We find that conopeptides are highly expressed within the venom-duct, and describe an in silico pipeline for their discovery and characterization using RNA-seq data. We have also carried out low-coverage shotgun sequencing of the genome, and have used these data to determine its size, genome-wide base composition, simple repeat, and mobile element densities. Conclusions Our results provide the first global view of venom-duct transcription in any cone snail. A notable feature of Conus bullatus venoms is the breadth of A-superfamily peptides expressed in the venom duct, which are unprecedented in their structural diversity. We also find SNP rates within conopeptides are higher compared to the remainder of C. bullatus transcriptome, consistent with the hypothesis that conopeptides are under diversifying selection.