An important resource for understanding bio-adhesion mechanisms: Cement gland transcriptomes of two goose barnacles, Pollicipes pollicipes and Lepas anatifera (Cirripedia, Thoracica)

Abstract Barnacles are sessile organisms globally distributed in marine and estuarine environments. The production of protein-based adhesives by cement glands is crucial for these organisms and plays a vital role in substrate attachment, thus inspiring biotechnological applications. Moreover, barnacles belong to bio-fouling communities, whose fixation onto man-made surfaces is of interest in terms of control and imposes an enormous economic cost on maritime industries. Here, we generated the first de novo assembly of cement gland transcriptomes of Pollicipes pollicipes (rocky-shore goose barnacle) and Lepas anatifera (pelagic goose barnacle) (Cirripedia, Thoracica), to generate molecular resources for understanding the bio-adhesion process in Cirripedia and to provide data for biotechnology. Via the Illumina next-generation sequencing technology, a total of 43.7 and 40.2 million (M) paired-end (PE) clean reads were obtained for P. pollicipes (PP) and L. anatifera (LA), respectively. De novo assemblies resulted in 116,377 transcripts for PP and 94,143 for LA, with N50 s of 1181 and 1028 bp, respectively. The Benchmarking Universal Single-Copy Orthologs (BUSCO) showed 78.7% (PP) and 91.7% (LA) of transcriptome completeness, in terms of expected gene content, for the Arthropoda phylum in each species. These results represent a substantial resource for expanding the knowledge on Cirripedia adhesion mechanisms and for contributions to the gene annotation of Crustacea where molecular resources are presently insufficient.