Transcriptome analysis of phenotypic plasticity in the Hokkaido salamander

两栖动物根据环境条件表现出灵活的表型。作为对猎物和捕食者的诱导性表型反应，北海道蝾螈幼虫表现出两种不同的形态：攻击形态和防御形态。它们的猎物--林蛙蝌蚪的存在，导致了一种宽头攻击的变形。捕食性蜻蜓若虫(Aeshna Nigrovisa)的存在诱导了一种防御形态，其特征是外部鳃增大，尾巴高大。然而，这些表型变化背后的分子机制尚未阐明。为了揭示这些可诱导的塑料形态背后的分子机制，我们对北海道火蜥蜴幼虫进行了从头转录组分析。我们从样本组织中提取了RNA并进行了测序。然后，我们比较了处理样本的读数和重叠群，并鉴定了差异表达的基因。

Amphibians display flexible phenotypes depending on environmental conditions. Larvae of the Hokkaido salamander, Hynobius retardatus, exhibit two distinct morphs, "attack morphs" and "defense morphs", as an inducible phenotypic response to prey and predators, respectively. The presence of their prey, Rana pirica tadpoles, induces a broad-headed attack morph. The presence of predatory dragonfly nymphs (Aeshna nigroflava) induces a defense morph, characterized by enlarged external gills and a high tail. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying these phenotypic changes have yet to be elucidated. To reveal the landscape of molecular mechanisms underlying these inducible plastic morphs, we carried out a de novo transcriptome analysis of Hokkaido salamander larvae. We extracted and sequenced RNAs from the sampled tissues. Then, we compared the obtained reads and contigs of the treatment samples and identified differentially expressed genes.