Despite the abundance of the hydrocoral genus Millepora, which consists of 19 species distributed in warm waters around the globe, the milleporids have received limited attention in coral reef studies. However, Millepora act as an important component of the reef framework and thus are geologically important.

We recently hosted a webinar with guest speaker Nikolaos Schizas from the University of Puerto Rico, who provided a case study in de novo transcriptome assembly with RNA-seq data with the nonmodel species of Carribean Millepora. Using comparative transcriptomics with the Ion Proton and differential expression analysis with the Seven Bridges Trinity pipeline, Professor Schizas’s work explores the question of whether the Caribbean Millepora represent genetically distinct taxa.

This webinar highlighted the Trinity pipeline, which consists of three independent software modules (Inchworm, Chrysalis, and Butterfly) that enable the robust de novo reconstruction of transcriptomes from RNA-seq data. Seven Bridges has built the Trinity pipeline on its platform, enabling members of the research community to either click-and-run the pipeline as-is or to completely customize their de novo RNA-seq workflow.

If you missed the webinar, feel free to watch the recording or take a look at the slides to learn more about using Trinity for de novo RNA-seq assembly.

Lu’s presentation slides (pdf)
Nick’s presentation slides (pdf)

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