Project description:we report a transcriptome-wide comparative investigation between surface and cave species in Sinocyclocheilus. De novo transcriptome assemblies were performed on surface and cave species; then the Sinocyclocheilus contigs were annotated with Gene Ontology. RNA-Seq assays revealed reduced transcription of a series of visual phototransduction and retinal disease related genes in cave-dwelling species compared with surface species. Degeneration of the retina in Sinocyclocheilus cavefish might occur in a lens-independent way by the down-regulation of several transcriptional factors, which have direct roles in retina development and maintenance, such as crx, rorb and Wnt pathway members. Examination of 2 different eye samples in 2 Sinocyclocheilus species.
Project description:We used an approach combining PacBio data and published Illumina reads to de novo assemble D. busckii contigs. We generated Hi-C data from D. busckii embryos to order these contigs into chromosome-length scaffolds. For D. virilis we generated Hi-C data to order and orient the published Dvir_caf1 scaffolds into chromosome-length assemblies. Furthermore, we compared Hi-C matrices from these two new assemblies with D. melanogaster with respect to synteny blocks and dosage compensation as a chromosome-wide gene-regulatory mechanism.