Gametophytic transcriptomics of an early embryophyte (Blasia pusilla) and comparative landscape of gametophyte evolution

Transcriptomics plays a central role in understanding the genetic underpinning of post-transcriptional regulation. In recent years, transcriptomics has not only acted as a model for unraveling post-transcriptional regulatory events but has also provided a basis for species-level comparative transcriptomics. In the absence of genomic data, transcriptomics not only allows for de-novo phylo-transcriptomics but also enables the detection of specific genes, which are specific to certain lineages or clades. We present the first reference gametophytic transcriptome of Blasia pusilla sequenced using Illumina Next-Seq with the aim of unravelling the gametophytic transcriptomics of an early embryophyte. We also highlight the role of transcriptomics in identifying early genes and possible phylogenetic pressures on ancestral gene evolution across embryophytes (land plants).