Abstract
Complete mitochondrial genomes (mitogenomes) are important molecular markers for understanding the phylogenetics of various species. Although recent studies on the mitogenomes of the Scorpaeniformes species have been greatly advanced, information regarding molecular studies and the taxonomic localization of Platycephalidae is still sparse. To further analyze the phylogeny of Platycephalidae, we sequenced the complete mitogenome of Cociella crocodilus of the Platycephalidae family within Scorpaeniformes for the first time. The mitogenome was 17,314 bp in length, contained two ribosomal RNA genes (rRNAs), 22 transfer RNA genes (tRNAs), 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), and two typical noncoding control regions (the control region (CR) and origin of the light strand (OL)). All PCGs used standard initiation codons ATG, apart from cox1. The majority of the tRNA genes could be folded into cloverleaf secondary structures, whereas the secondary structure of tRNASer (AGN) lacked a dihydrouridine (DHU) stem. The CR contained several conserved sequence blocks (CSBs) and eight tandem repeats. In addition, the phylogenetic relationship based on the concatenated nucleotides sequences of 13 PCGs indicated that the Platycephalidae species are relatively basal in the phylogenetic relationships of Scorpaeniformes. Our results may not only advance the origin and the evolution of Scorpaeniformes, but also provide information for the genetic evolution and taxonomy of the teleostean species.
Highlights
Within the order of Scorpaeniformes, the Platycephalidae family is usually distributed in tropical and temperate coastal or estuarine waters in the Indian and Pacific Oceans
The phylogenetic tree based on the thirteen protein-coding genes (PCGs) sequences was reconstructed by Maximum Likelihood (ML) and Bayesian inference (BI) methods to understand the higher phylogeny of Scorpaeniformes
The concatenated nucleotide sequence alignment was used in IQ-TREE and MrBayes v 3.2.4 to determine maximum likelihood (ML) and Bayesian inference (BI) for phylogenetic analysis [25,26]
Summary
Within the order of Scorpaeniformes, the Platycephalidae family is usually distributed in tropical and temperate coastal or estuarine waters in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Mitogenomes have been widely used as effective molecular markers for molecular evolution, phylogenetic studies and population genetics [8,9] due to their unique characteristics of maternal inheritance, relatively conserved genome structures, coding content conservation, high mutation rate and low intermolecular genetic recombination level [6]. Based on these advantages, the complete mitogenome of genetic code alteration, gene rearrangement, secondary structures of tRNAs and regions of transcription and replication are widely utilized for taxonomic phylogenetic analysis [10,11]. The phylogenetic tree based on the thirteen PCG sequences was reconstructed by Maximum Likelihood (ML) and Bayesian inference (BI) methods to understand the higher phylogeny of Scorpaeniformes
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