First transcriptome assembly of the temperate azooxanthellate octocoral Eleutherobia rubra

Abstract

Eleutherobia rubra (Brundin, 1896) is a temperate asymbiotic octocoral, distributed around Korea, Japan, the west coast of the USA, and northwest Australia. This soft coral is particularly found in the East, West, and South Seas around the Korean Peninsula, so it is useful for investigating the stress responses of corals to rising seawater temperatures around the Korean Peninsula simultaneously and the effects of climate change on coral ecosystems in temperate regions. One individual of E. rubra (Anthozoa: Alcyonacea: Alcyoniidae) was collected around Pohang, South Korea (36 degrees 00 ' 17.7 '' N, 129 degrees 35 ' 12.1 '' E) and extracted total RNA to construct the transcriptome assembly. The Illumina HiSeq3000 platform was used for the transcriptome sequencing and 32,624 coding sequences were predicted by the de novo assembly and analysis of the coding regions. This is the first transcriptome assembly for the genus Eleutherobia. The transcriptome information for E. rubra will be a valuable resource for studying the transcriptomic changes in temperate and cold-water corals in response to environmental stresses.