Abstract
The complete mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) of Yponomeuta montanatus is sequenced and compared with other published yponomeutoid mitogenomes. The mitogenome is circular, 15,349 bp long, and includes the typical metazoan mitochondrial genes (13 protein-coding genes, two ribosomal RNA genes, and 22 transfer RNA genes) and an A + T-rich region. All 13 protein-coding genes use a typical start codon ATN, the one exception being cox1, which uses CGA across yponomeutoid mitogenomes. Comparative analyses further show that the secondary structures of tRNAs are conserved, including loss of the Dihydorouidine (DHU) arm in trnS1 (AGN), but remarkable nucleotide variation has occurred mainly in the DHU arms and pseudouridine (TψC) loops. A + T-rich regions exhibit substantial length variation among yponomeutoid mitogenomes, and conserved sequence blocks are recognized but some of them are not present in all species. Multiple phylogenetic analyses confirm the position of Y. montanatus in Yponomeutoidea. However, the superfamily-level relationships in the Macroheterocera clade in Lepidoptera recovered herein show considerable difference with that recovered in previous mitogenomic studies, raising the necessity of extensive phylogenetic investigation when more mitogenomes become available for this clade.
Highlights
The mitochondrial genome is a circular and double-stranded molecule that usually encodes 37 genes (13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), two ribosomal RNA genes, 22 transfer RNA genes), and an A + T-rich region (Boore 1999)
Comparative analyses of lepidopteran mitogenomes showed the gene order trnM-trnI-trnQ is present in more derived ditrysian lineage and its close relatives Tischerioidea and Palaephatoidea, in contrast to the ancestral trnI-trnQ-trnM in other lepidopterans such as Thitarodes renzhiensis (Yang, 1991) and T. yunnanensis (Yang, 1992) (Cao et al 2012; Timmermans et al 2014)
As in other insect mitogenomes (Boore 1999), high A + T content is recognized across Yponomeutoidea mitogenomes, which ranges from 81% in P. lutella (KM023645) to 82.5% in L. malifoliella (Table 2)
Summary
The mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) is a circular and double-stranded molecule that usually encodes 37 genes (13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), two ribosomal RNA genes (rRNAs), 22 transfer RNA genes (tRNAs)), and an A + T-rich region (Boore 1999). In Yponomeutoidea, 11 families were recognized based on a multiple-gene dataset (Sohn et al 2013), but phylogenetic relationships among yponomeutoid families still need further investigation (Mitter et al 2017). 6.06 (Tamura et al 2013) was used to generate three different datasets: PCG123 (all codon positions of 13 PCGs), PCG123R (PCG123 dataset plus two rRNAs and 22 tRNAs), and PCGAA (amino acid sequences translated from 13 PCGs).
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