Abstract
Williams’s jerboa (Scarturus williamsi), a medium-sized jerboa distributed in Anatolia and its adjacent regions, is a member of the four- and five-toed jerboas found mostly in Asia. Disagreements about the taxonomy of this taxon at the genus/species level continue to exist. Here, we report the first effort to sequence and assemble the mitochondrial genome of Williams’s jerboa from Turkey. The mitochondrial genome of S. williamsi was 16,653 bp in total length and contained 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 22 transfer RNAs (tRNAs), two ribosomal RNAs (rRNAs), and two non-coding regions (the D-loop and OL region) with intergenic spacer. All of the genes, except ND6 and eight tRNAs, were encoded on the heavy chain strand, similar to the features of mitogenomes of other rodents. When compared with all available rodent mitochondrial genomes, Williams’s jerboa showed (1) a serine deletion at the 3′-end of the ATP8 gene, (2) the ND5 gene terminated with a TAG codon and (3) a tandem repeat cluster (273 bp in length) in the control region. Williams’s jerboa and Siberian jerboa grouped as sister taxa despite the high genetic distance (17.6%) between them, belonging to Allactaginae. This result is consistent with the latest pre-revision, which suggests that Williams’s jerboa and the Siberian jerboa may belong to separate genera, as Scarturus and Orientallactaga, respectively. The present study provides a reference mitochondrial genome for Williams’s jerboa for further molecular studies of other species of Dipodoidea and Rodentia.
Highlights
The superfamily Dipodoidea (Myomorpha, Rodentia, Mammalia), a monophyletic group represented by 17 genera and 54 extant species, is widely distributed in the Holarctic region (Holden, Cserkész & Musser, 2017; Whitaker, 2017; Michaux & Shenbrot, 2017)
The mitogenome was similar in structure to those of other Dipodoidea mitogenomes (Yue et al, 2015; Ding et al, 2016; Luo & Liao, 2016; Luo, Ding & Liao, 2016; Reyes et al, 2016, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/AJ416890.1) and included 13 protein-coding (PCGs), 22 transfer RNA, two ribosomal RNA genes, a light chain (L) replication origin (OL), and a large non-coding control region (D-loop)
The ND6 gene, OL origin and eight transfer RNAs (tRNAs) genes (tRNAAla, tRNAAsn, tRNACys, tRNAGlu, tRNAGln, tRNAPro, tRNASer(UCN) and tRNATyr) were located on the light chain (L chain), while 12 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 14 tRNA and 2 ribosomal RNAs (rRNAs) genes were located on the heavy chain (H chain) (Fig. 1; Table 1)
Summary
The superfamily Dipodoidea (Myomorpha, Rodentia, Mammalia), a monophyletic group represented by 17 genera and 54 extant species, is widely distributed in the Holarctic region (Holden, Cserkész & Musser, 2017; Whitaker, 2017; Michaux & Shenbrot, 2017). Considering the recent studies (Malaney, Demboski & Cook, 2017; Shenbrot et al, 2017; Lebedev et al, 2018; Bannikova et al, 2019; Cserkész et al, 2019), the number of genera and species could increase to 18 and 71, respectively. Lebedev et al (2013) stated that the superfamily Dipodoidea comprises of three ecomorphotypes (birch-mice, jumping mice and jerboas) that are traditionally classified within a single-family (Dipodidae) or placed in up to six families. The latest classification (Michaux & Shenbrot, 2017) is followed in the present study because of the lack of a comprehensive revision of Dipodoidea
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