NvERTx: A gene expression database to compare Embryogenesis and Regeneration in the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis

For more than a century researchers have been comparing embryogenesis and regeneration hoping that lessons learned from embryonic development will unlock hidden regenerative potential. This problem has historically been a difficult one to investigate since the best regenerative model systems are poor embryonic models and vice versa. Recently however, the comparison of embryogenesis and regeneration has seen renewed interest as emerging models including the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis have allowed researchers to investigate these processes in the same organism. This interest has been further fueled by the advent of high-throughput transcriptomic analyses that provide virtual mountains of data. Unfortunately much of this data remains in raw unanalyzed formats that are difficult to access or browse. Here we present Nematostella vectensis Embryogenesis and Regeneration Transcriptomics - NvERTx, the first platform for comparing gene expression during embryogenesis and regeneration. NvERTx is comprised of close to 50 RNAseq datasets spanning embryogenesis and regeneration in Nematostella. These data were used to perform a robust de novo transcriptome assembly which users can search, BLAST and plot expression of multiple genes during these two developmental processes. The site is also home to the results of gene clustering analyses, to further mine the data and identify groups of co-expressed genes. The site can be accessed at http://nvertx.kahikai.org.