Abstract
Most animal mitochondrial genomes are small, circular and structurally conserved. However, recent work indicates that diverse taxa possess unusual mitochondrial genomes. In Isopoda, species in multiple lineages have atypical and rearranged mitochondrial genomes. However, more species of this speciose taxon need to be evaluated to understand the evolutionary origins of atypical mitochondrial genomes in this group. In this study, we report the presence of an atypical mitochondrial structure in the New Zealand endemic marine isopod, Isocladus armatus. Data from long- and short-read DNA sequencing suggest that I. armatus has two mitochondrial chromosomes. The first chromosome consists of two mitochondrial genomes that have been inverted and fused together in a circular form, and the second chromosome consists of a single mitochondrial genome in a linearized form. This atypical mitochondrial structure has been detected in other isopod lineages, and our data from an additional divergent isopod lineage (Sphaeromatidae) lends support to the hypothesis that atypical structure evolved early in the evolution of Isopoda. Additionally, we find that an asymmetrical site previously observed across many species within Isopoda is absent in I. armatus, but confirm the presence of two asymmetrical sites recently reported in two other isopod species.
Highlights
Most animal mitochondrial genomes are small, circular and structurally conserved
We report the presence of an atypical mitochondrial structure in the New Zealand endemic marine isopod, Isocladus armatus
We find that an asymmetrical site previously observed across many species within Isopoda is absent in I. armatus, but confirm the presence of two asymmetrical sites recently reported in two other isopod species
Summary
Most animal mitochondrial genomes are small, circular and structurally conserved. recent work indicates that diverse taxa possess unusual mitochondrial genomes. Recent research shows that some isopods have an atypical mitochondrial genome structure (electronic supplementary material, figure S1), where each mitochondrion contains both a linear and a circular chromosome (figure 1) [6,7]. We primarily refer to either the dimer, or the ‘unit’ which represents the fundamental repeated unit across both mitochondrial chromosomes, alongside any unique sequence between the repeats These different copies or structural units of the mitochondrial genome in some isopod species are not entirely identical. This hypothesis is complicated by the presence of ‘typical’ mitochondrial structures patchily dispersed in suborders such as Sphaeromatidea (family: Sphaeromatidae), Phreatoicidea (family: Amphisopodidae) and Asellota (family: Asellidae) (electronic supplementary material, figure S1) [8,9,10,11,12,13]
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