The most comprehensive annotation of the Krill transcriptome provides new insights for the study of physiological processes and environmental adaptation

Abstract

The krill species Euphausia superba plays a critical role in the food chain of the Antarctic ecosystem, as the abundance of its biomass affects trophic levels both below it and above. Major changes in climate conditions observed in the Antarctic Peninsula region in the last decades have the potential to alter the distribution of the krill population and its reproductive dynamics. A deeper understanding of the adaptation capabilities of this species, and of the molecular mechanisms behind them, are urgently needed. The availability of a large body of RNA-seq assays gave us the opportunity to extend the current knowledge of the krill transcriptome, considerably reducing errors and redundancies. The study covered the entire developmental process, from larval stages to adult individuals, information which are of central relevance for ecological studies. We describe KrillDB2 database, which combines the latest annotation of the krill transcriptome with a series of analyses specifically targeting genes and molecular processes relevant to krill physiology. KrillDB2 provides in a single resource the most complete collection of experimental data and bioinformatic annotations: it includes an extended catalog of krill genes; an atlas of their expression profiles over all RNA-seq datasets publicly available; a study of differential expression across multiple conditions such as developmental stages, geographical regions, seasons, and sexes. Finally, it provides information about non-coding RNAs, a class of molecules whose contribute to krill physiology, which have never been reported before.