Next generation sequencing: Transcriptomics

Fungal transcriptomics is a rising field which has gained attention in the last two decades. The recent democratization of high throughput next-generation sequencing (NGS) techniques for large-scale transcriptomic analysis provided the opportunity to explore transcriptomes at an unprecedented level of resolution. Here, RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) through NGS is described, focusing on fungi. A step-by-step guide on RNA-seq is provided, as well as a background on the main NGS platforms. In addition, several remarkable studies using RNA-seq in fungal systems are presented, and recent advances on large scale transcriptomics, including the application of laser microdissection (LM) technology, single cell RNA-seq, and metatranscriptomics, are introduced.