Genomes, expression profiles, and diversity of mitochondria of the White-footed Deermouse Peromyscus leucopus, reservoir of Lyme disease and other zoonoses

Alan G Barbour,Anthony D Long,Jean I Tsao,James Baldwin-Brown,Vanessa J Cook,Hanjuan Shao

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-54389-3

Alan G Barbour, Anthony D Long + Show 4 more

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https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-54389-3

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Abstract

The cricetine rodents Peromyscus leucopus and P. maniculatus are key reservoirs for several zoonotic diseases in North America. We determined the complete circular mitochondrial genome sequences of representatives of 3 different stock colonies of P. leucopus, one stock colony of P. maniculatus and two wild populations of P. leucopus. The genomes were syntenic with that of the murids Mus musculus and Rattus norvegicus. Phylogenetic analysis confirmed that these two Peromyscus species are sister taxa in a clade with P. polionotus and also uncovered a distinction between P. leucopus populations in the eastern and the central United States. In one P. leucopus lineage four extended regions of mitochondrial pseudogenes were identified in the nuclear genome. RNA-seq analysis revealed transcription of the entire genome and differences from controls in the expression profiles of mitochondrial genes in the blood, but not in liver or brain, of animals infected with the zoonotic pathogen Borrelia hermsii. PCR and sequencing of the D-loop of the mitochondrion identified 32 different haplotypes among 118 wild P. leucopus at a Connecticut field site. These findings help to further establish P. leucopus as a model organism for studies of emerging infectious diseases, ecology, and in other disciplines.

Highlights

The White-footed Deermouse Peromyscus leucopus occupies a broad range of environments across much of central and eastern United States and adjacent areas of Canada and Mexico[1,2]
We studied representatives of (1) an outbred colony located at the Peromyscus Genetic Stock Center (PGSC) but with origins in North Carolina, (2) an outbred colony at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML) with founders from New York, (3) an inbred colony (GS16A1) begun with a breeding pair from Illinois, and (4–5) two wild animals captured in Connecticut (LG1) and Illinois (IL2)
A circularly-permuted de novo assembly with coverage of 13,958X from the 100 nt Illumina paired-end reads was identical to a consensus from mapping of reads to the mitochondrial genome of P. polionotus, the closest relative to P. leucopus for which a complete sequence existed

Summary

Introduction

The White-footed Deermouse Peromyscus leucopus occupies a broad range of environments across much of central and eastern United States and adjacent areas of Canada and Mexico[1,2]. In other parts of North America P. maniculatus is a key reservoir for hantaviruses[8] and the relapsing fever agent Borrelia hermsii[9]. Both P. leucopus and P. maniculatus are remarkably resilient in the face of infections with otherwise serious pathogens for humans (reviewed in[10]). We report complete genome sequences of the mitochondria of P. leucopus in stock colonies originating in three different locations in the species’ range and two wild-caught animals from the northeastern www.nature.com/scientificreports and north-central U.S We compare these genomes with the mitochondrial genomes of other Peromyscus species, and identify mitochondrial pseudogenes in the nuclear genome. The observations and experimental results add to the expanding database on this species, as it becomes further established as a model organism for research in several disciplines

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