A multi-tissue transcriptome and expression atlas of Astacus leptodactylus: assembly and annotation

We present a multi-tissue transcriptome of the narrow-clawed crayfish Astacus leptodactylus , assembled from 37 paired-end RNA-seq samples spanning 12 tissue types including ganglia, sensory neuron, and the abdominal receptor organ — a mechanosensory preparation comprising two mechanoreceptor neurons and associated receptor muscle fibers. A draft genome assembled from PacBio HiFi long reads supported genome-guided assembly. Genome-guided, Trinity, and rnaSPAdes assemblies were constructed independently and subjected to sequential redundancy reduction using EvidentialGene tr2aacds and MMseqs2 clustering. The final merged transcriptome comprises 93,345 transcripts (N50 = 2,498 bp, mean = 1,656 bp, GC = 45.4%), achieving BUSCO completeness of C:89.5%[S:82.6%,D:7.0%],F:7.7%,M:2.8% (crustacea_odb12, n = 1,536). Functional annotation identified 25,729 annotated transcripts with 14,260 unique Gene Ontology terms. Tissue-specific expression profiling revealed distinct clustering of sensory, digestive, and musculoskeletal tissues. Functional completeness was independently validated using ten ion channel sequences previously cloned from this species: all ten were recovered at 84–100% nucleotide identity, with SwissProt annotation and tissue-specific expression patterns fully consistent with established channel physiology. This resource provides a foundation for functional genomics and ion channel research in non-model crustaceans.