A transcriptome resource for the Arctic Cod (Boreogadus saida)

Arctic Cod (Boreogadus saida) serve as an important link in Arctic food webs and are thus considered an important species for environmental monitoring. RNA-Seq was conducted on samples from wild-collected individuals representing various age classes and tissue types to obtain as complete a transcriptome as possible on an Illumina MiSeq, which resulted in a total of 64,457 transcripts with an average length of 295 bp. We identified well-known genes that are associated with temperature change or response to pollutants. This RNA-Seq effort provides the first insight into the B. saida transcriptome, which can be a starting point for investigations identifying genes for local adaptation and genomic responses to future environmental change.