Functional Annotation of Coding Sequences in the Cyanogenic Millipede Cherokia georgiana.

Across thousands of known millipede species, genetic data is extremely limited. Many interesting biological processes in millipedes are ill-defined, such as the production of a defensive hydrogen cyanide secretion and UV fluorescence. We describe a transcriptomic dataset of the millipede Cherokia georgiana, including predicted coding regions and functional annotations. This de novo transcriptome will facilitate future research in understanding gene expression under a variety of conditions. Next-generation sequencing was conducted on polyA-enriched mature messenger RNAs using Illumina 2 x 150 paired-end sequencing. Total number of assembled contigs was 146,956. Transcripts were compared against the NCBI non-redundant (nr) protein database using DIAMOND BLASTx to identify sequence similarity to known proteins. Transcripts with sequence similarity to genes associated with cyanogenesis, including mandelonitrile oxidase and hydroxynitrile lyase, are present in this transcriptome. The data presented here enhances existing knowledge of millipede biology and provides a valuable reference for future research in myriapod evolution and ecology.