PotatoRTD and TomatoRTD: Comprehensive Reference Transcript Datasets for Accurate Transcriptome Analysis and Isoform Discovery
2026-08-24
Transcriptome annotations provide essential information on transcript locations, sequences and structures, including transcription start, end sites and splice junctions. They underpin key biological analyses such as gene and transcript quantification, and the study of transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulation, including alternative transcription initiation, polyadenylation and splicing. Accurate characterisation of transcript isoforms is critical for understanding how gene expression relates to functional protein products. However, for many species—including Solanaceae crops such as potato and tomato—current annotations suffer from limited isoform coverage, with tens or hundreds of thousands of splice junctions and transcript isoforms missing. This undermines the completeness and accuracy of transcript-level analyses. Here, by generating Iso-seq and RNA-seq on a range of tissues and samples, we have produced transcriptome annotations for both potato and tomato with improved coverage, diversity, accurate splice junctions, and transcript start and end sites. We have also made these high-quality resources accessible through genome browsers. These enhanced annotations will enable more accurate transcriptome analyses, supporting higher-resolution and novel biological discoveries.