Platygyra carnosus Veron, 2000 is a dominant species of structure forming coral in southern China. This species is under the threat of various environmental stressors such as heat and UV exposure during low tides, sedimentation, bioerosion by sea urchin, and tissue growth anomaly (i.e. "tumor formation").

The aim of this project was to produce a large database of expressed gene sequences in Platygyra carnosus. Healthy and tumorous tissue samples were collected from two locations in Hong Kong. RNA was extracted from each sample, pooled, and reversed transcribed to generate a cDNA library. The cDNA library was then sequenced using Illumina HiSeqTM 2000.

De novo assembly of the transcriptome sequences resulted in 162,468 unigenes with an average length of 606 bp. These unigenes were further annotated by NCBI, GO, and KEGG. The data were organized to form PcarnBase, a searchable database with a user-friendly interface, which provides access to sequence data and functional annotations (GO and KEGG). PcarnBase also allows for search of homolog sequences through BLAST.

More details of the research background, methods and results can be found in Sun et al. (2013).

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  Exposure of the upper part of a colony to air during a low tide

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  A colony showing growth anormaly (i.e. "tumor") at the lower right corner

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  A shallow water coral community dominated by Platygyra carnosus in Hong Kong