De novo transcriptome assembly and analysis of Sf21 cells using illumina paired end sequencing

ABSTRACT: Spodoptera is an important polyphagous agricultural insect pest in the tropical world. The genomic details are limited to understand the pest biology at molecular level. In the present study, we sequenced and assembled the transcriptome from Sf21 cells into a non redundant set of 24,038 contigs of ~ 47.38 Mb in size. A total of 26,390 unigenes were identified from the assembled transcripts and their annotation revealed the prevalent protein domains in Sf21 cells. The present study would provide a resource for gene discovery and development of functional molecular markers to understand the biology of S. frugiperda. REVIEWERS: This article was reviewed by Dr. Thiago Motta Venancio and Prof. Michael Gray. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13062-015-0072-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.