The green shore crab, Carcinus maenas, is used widely in biomonitoring,
ecotoxicology and for studies into host-pathogen interactions. It is also an
important invasive species in numerous global locations. However, the genomic
resources for this organism are still sparse, limiting research progress in
these fields. To address this resource shortfall we produced a C. maenas
transcriptome, enabled by the progress in next-generation sequencing
technologies, and applied this to assemble information on the innate immune
system in this species.