A de novo assembly of the newt transcriptome combined with proteomic validation identifies new protein families expressed during tissue regeneration

We describe the de novo assembly of the transcriptome of the newt Notophthalmus viridescens and its experimental validation. RNA pools covering embryonic and larval development, different stages of heart, appendage and lens regeneration, as well as a collection of different undamaged tissues were used to generate sequencing datasets on Sanger, Illumina and 454 platforms. Through a sequential de novo assembly strategy, hybrid datasets were converged into one comprehensive transcriptome comprising 120,922 non-redundant transcripts with a N50 of 975. 38,384 putative transcripts were annotated and around 15,000 transcripts were experimentally validated as protein coding by mass spectrometry based proteomics. Bioinformatical analysis of coding transcripts identified 826 proteins specific for urodeles. Several newly identified proteins establish novel protein families based on the presence of new sequence motifs without counterparts in public databases, while others containing known protein domains extend already existing families and also constitute new ones.We demonstrate that our multistep assembly approach allows de novo assembly of the newt transcriptome with an annotation grade comparable to well characterized organisms. Our data provide the groundwork for mechanistic experiments to answer the question whether urodeles utilize proprietary sets of genes for tissue regeneration.