Discovery of host defence genes in the Japanese scallop Mizuhopecten yessoensis Jay by expressed sequence tag analysis of kidney tissue

The Japanese scallop Mizuhopecten yessoensis is one of the most important aquaculture mollusca in Japan and China. In the present study, a high‐quality cDNA library of the Japanese scallop was constructed from the kidney tissue. A total of 2919 expressed sequence tags longer than 100 bp were generated from this library. A cluster of 1440 unique sequences, which consisted of 258 contigs and 1182 singletons, was revealed. Based on blast searches, 882 (61.3%) genes had significant ( E ‐value <1e–5) matches to known sequences in public databases. Among them, >70 genes were involved in stress response, immunity and apoptosis. These results expanded our knowledge of the genetics and physiology of the Japanese scallop, and provided a useful resource for gene discovery for further research of this species.