De novo transcriptome assembly of the amphipod Gammarus chevreuxi exposed to chronic hypoxia

Abstract

Environmental hypoxia is becoming more prevalent in aquatic environments due to eutrophication and climate change. While the ecological and physiological responses of marine animals to hypoxia have received considerable attention, the molecular responses remain largely undetermined. We have assembled a transcriptome for the brackishwater amphipod, Gammarus chevreuxi, exposed to three different levels of environmental oxygen (100, 40 and 20% air saturation). Sequencing using Illumina HiSeq 2000 produced 227.1 M reads which were assembled into 291,934 contigs corresponding to 218,558 genes. The assembled transcriptome provides a valuable resource to explore the molecular mechanisms underpinning responses to chronic hypoxia in an ecologically-important aquatic invertebrate.