Journal of Systematics JSE and Evolution doi: 10.1111/jse.12469 Research Article Comparative transcriptomes and development of expressed sequence tag-simple sequence repeat markers for two closely related oak species Jing-Jing Sun1, Tao Zhou2, Rui-Ting Zhang1, Yun Jia1, Yue-Mei Zhao3, Jia Yang1, and Gui-Fang Zhao1* 1Key Laboratory of Resource Biology and Biotechnology in Western China, Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, Northwest University, Xi’an 710069, China 2School of Pharmary, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710061, China 3College of Biopharmaceutical and Food Engineering, Shangluo University, Shangluo 726000, Shaanxi, China *Author for correspondence. E-mail:
[email protected]. Tel.: 86-29-88305264. Fax: 86-29-88303572. Received 1 December 2017; Accepted 7 October 2018; Article first published online11 xx November Month 2018 2018 Abstract Quercus species comprise the major genera in the family Fagaceae and they are widely distributed in the Northern Hemisphere. Many Quercus species, including several endemics, are distributed in China. Genetic resources have been established for the important genera but few transcriptomes are available for Quercus species in China. In this study, we used Illumina paired-end sequencing to obtain the transcriptomes of two oak species, Q. liaotungensis Koidz. and Q. mongolica Fisch. ex Turcz. Approximately 24 million reads were generated and then a total of 103 618 unigenes were obtained after assembly for both species. Comparative transcriptome analyses of both species identified a total of 12 981 orthologous contigs. The Ka/Ks estimation and enrichment analysis indicated that 1179 (9.08%) orthologs showed rapid evolution, and most of these orthologs were related to functions comprising “DNA repair”, “response to cold”, and “response to drought”.