SMRT sequencing of the full-length transcriptome of Gekko gecko

Abstract

Tokay Gecko (Gekko gecko) is a rare and endangered medicinal animal in China. Its dry body has been used as an anti-asthmatic agent for two thousand years. To date, the genome and transcriptome of this species remain poorly understood. Here, we adopted single molecule real-time (SMRT) sequencing to obtain full-length transcriptome data and characterized the transcriptome structure. We identified 882,273 circular consensus (CCS) reads, including 746,317 full-length nonchimeric (FLNC) reads. The transcript cluster analysis revealed 212,964 consensus sequences, including 203,994 high-quality isoforms. In total, 111,372 of 117,888 transcripts were successfully annotated against eight databases (Nr, eggNOG, Swiss-Prot, GO, COG, KOG, Pfam and KEGG). Furthermore, 23,877 alternative splicing events, 169,128 simple sequence repeats (SSRs), 10,437 lncRNAs and 7,932 transcription factors were predicted across all transcripts. To our knowledge, this report is the first to document the G. gecko transcriptome using SMRT sequencing. The full-length transcript data might accelerate transcriptome research and lay the foundation for further research on G. gecko.