De novo assembly and functional annotation of the nervous system transcriptome in the Caribbean spiny lobster Panulirus argus

The spiny lobster Panulirus argus is an ecologically relevant species in shallow water coral reefs and the target of the most lucrative fishery in the greater Caribbean region. This study reports, for the first time, the nervous system transcriptome of the Caribbean spiny lobster Panulirus argus assembled from short Illumina 150 bp PE raw reads. A total of 60,213,359 pairs of raw reads were assembled using the Elvers pipeline. The assembly resulted in a total of 206,273 transcripts with N50 of 1341 bp and L50 of 23,665 contigs. Analysis of this filtered assembly by BUSCO resulted in the identification of 92.49% universal orthologs. Analysis of core GFs completeness with the Arthropoda database resulted in the identification of 77.8% of 1936 Core GFs. Functional gene annotation was conducted using the web server TRAPID and the dammit pipeline. TRAPID and dammit provided functional annotation for 25,617 and 57,984 of transcripts, respectively. Lastly, gene enrichment analyses were conducted using the Gene ontology (GO) and KEGG pathway analyses (Kaas) databases. This transcriptome represents the first step to improving the understanding of the molecular underpinnings of viral infection and behavioral immunity (i.e., social distancing) in this iconic coral reef-associated invertebrate. The development of this and other genomic resources is of utmost importance as they will improve the understanding of the biology of P. argus while also aiding in fishery management and conservation strategies of this iconic coral reef-dwelling, heavily fished marine invertebrate.