Panpulmonate transcriptomes reveal candidate genes involved in the adaptation to freshwater and terrestrial habitats in gastropods

BackgroundThe conquest of the land from aquatic habitats is a fascinating evolutionary event that happened multiple times in different phyla. Mollusks are among the organisms that successfully invaded the non-marine realm, resulting in the radiation of terrestrial panpulmonate gastropods. We compared transcriptomes from panpulmonates to study the selective pressures that modeled the transitions from marine into freshwater and terrestrial realms in this molluscan lineage.\n\nResultsDe novo assembly of six panpulmonate transcriptomes resulted in 55,000 - 97,000 predicted open reading frames, of which 9 - 14% were functionally annotated. Adding published transcriptomes, we predicted 791 ortholo