Estimate a transcriptome

[Pablin]

Hi all,
does anybody know how Can I estimate the transcriptome size if I don´t know the right size of a genome?
I would like to perform multiplexing with more than 2 samples on the same lane on a HiSeq but don´t know how many more can be done...
Thank you.

Pablo

[westerman]

The transcriptome size has very little to do with the genome size (at least for eukaryotes). Consider that, for plants, Arabidopsis has a genome size of 157MB while Paris Japonica, supposedly the largest plant genome, has a genome size one thousand times that at ~150GB. Does PJ have a 1000 times as many transcripts? It is highly doubtful. :-)

As for an estimate of your transcriptome size, take the transcriptome of a closely related organism and use that.