Objective: The objective of this experiment was to identify transcripts in baker’s yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) that could have originated from previously non-coding genomic regions, or de novo. We generated this data to be able to compare the transcriptomes of different species of Ascomycota. Data description: We generated high-depth RNA sequencing data for 11 species of yeast: Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Saccharomyces paradoxus, Saccharomyces mikatae, Saccharomyces kudriavzevii, Saccharomyces bayanus, Naumovia castelii, Kluyveromyces lactis, Lachancea waltii, Lachancea thermotolerans, Lachancea kluyveri, and Schizosaccharomyces pombe. Using RNA-Seq from yeast grown in rich and oxidative conditions we created genome-guided de novo assemblies of the transcriptomes for each species. We included synthetic spike-in transcripts in each sample to determine the lower limit of detection of the sequencing platform as well as the reliability of our de novo transcriptome assembly pipeline. We subsequently compared the de novo transcripts assemblies to the reference gene annotations and generated assemblies that comprised both annotated and novel transcripts.

The work was funded by the following grants: (1) BFU2015-65235-P Ministerio de Economía e Innovación (Spanish Government)-FEDER (EU). (2) BFU2015-68351-P Ministerio de Economía e Innovación (Spanish Government)-FEDER (EU). (3) MDM-2014-0370 “Maria de Maeztu” Programme for Units of Excellence in R&D (Spanish Government). (4) 2017SGR1054 Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca Generalitat de Catalunya. (5) 2017SGR01020 Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca Generalitat de Catalunya. (6) Predoctoral fellowship (FI, Generalitat de Catalunya) to WRB. Grants 1, 3 and 4 were used to cover lab expenses and to obtain the RNA samples from yeast cultures. Grants 2 and 5 were used for RNA sequencing. Grant 6 covered the salary of WRB. These funding bodies had no role in the design of the study, collection of the data, analysis of the results, or writing of the manuscript.