Holo-Transcriptome Sequences from the Tropical Marine Sponge Cinachyrella alloclada

Marine sponge transcriptomes are underrepresented in current databases. Furthermore, only two sponge genomes are available for comparative studies. Here we present the assembled and annotated holo-transcriptome of the common Florida reef sponge from the species Cinachyrella alloclada. After Illumina high throughput sequencing, the data assembled using Trinity v2.5 confirmed a highly symbiotic organism, with the complexity of high microbial abundance (HMA) sponges. This dataset is enriched in poly-A selected eukaryotic, rather than microbial transcripts. Overall, 39,813 transcripts with verified sponge sequence homology coded for 8,496 unique proteins. The average sequence length was found to be 946 bp with an N50 sequence length of 1290 bp. Overall, the sponge assembly resulted in a GC content of 51.04%, which is within the range of GC bases in a eukaryotic transcriptome. BUSCO scored completeness analysis revealed a completeness of 60.3% and 60.1% based on the Eukaryota and Metazoa databases, respectively. Overall, this study points to an overarching goal of developing the Cinachyrella alloclada sponge as a useful new experimental model organism.