The final objective for this project was to conduct a differential gene expression analysis of transcriptomic data from two distinct blastogenic stages in the marine model tunicate Botryllus schlosseri. This will then be followed up with a functional enrichment analysis to extract biological meaning from significantly differently expressed genes.

This repo is dedicated to a bioinformatics project for Spring 2023 FISH 546 at SAFS. My version of this project will involve the replication of some aspects of BioProject PRJNA579844 which has 90 RNAseq run files.

Briefly, colonial marine tunicates like Botryllus schlosseri are capable of both sexually reproducing through a single fertilized egg (embryogenesis) and through asexual reproduction where new generations are derived from somatic cells of the parental body (blastogenesis). In healthy Botryllus schlosseri, blastogenesis occurs as a weekly synchronized process. Transcriptomic data available from this project isolated RNA across several developmental stages of Botryllus schlosseri from the whole body.

Within this project I will evaluate the whole transcriptome of an the early blastogenic stage b5 to b6 in the secondary bud and the late takeover blastogenic stage in the adult zooid.

Below are the checksums generated for each fastq file downloaded for this project.