Meeting Abstract

P3.80  Friday, Jan. 6  Transcriptome Analysis of Embryogenesis in Nematostella vectensis TULIN, S*; SMITH, J ; Marine Biological Laboratory stulin@mbl.edu

Gene Regulatory Networks are a powerful tool to elucidate the important regulatory events of embryogenesis. We are studying the embryonic Gene Regulatory Network for the cnidarian, Nematostella vectensis, because its pivotal position in the tree of life as the outgroup to Bilaterians will allow us, by comparing regulatory network architecture, to address key outstanding questions about the evolution of body axis specification. In order to build a complete embryonic network it is necessary to begin with a full transcriptome analysis with multiple time points during the first 24 hours of development. We have used Next-Generation sequencing on the Illumina HiSeq 1000 with strand-specific RNA-seq library construction in order to reach saturation coverage of all embryonic transcripts. The transcriptomes will be used to bolster the Nematostella reference genome in cooperation with other Nematostella labs, and taken further into the network construction pipeline. Parallel efforts are focused on developing advanced, high-throughput network prediction techniques such as High Density RNA-Seq and Perturbation-Seq.