Molecular Biology and Evolution, Vol 14, 1266-1272, Copyright © 1997 by Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution
A Janke and U Arnason
The complete mitochondrial genome of the alligator, Alligator
mississippiensis, was sequenced. The size of the molecule is 16,642
nucleotides. Previously reported rearrangements of tRNAs in crocodile
mitochondrial genomes were confirmed and, relative to mammals, no other
deviations of gene order were observed. The analysis of protein-coding
genes of the alligator showed an evolutionary rate that is roughly the same
as in mammals. Thus, the evolutionary rate in the alligator is faster than
that in birds as well as that in cold-blooded vertebrates. This contradicts
hypotheses of constant body temperatures or high metabolic rate being
correlated with elevated molecular evolutionary rates. It is commonly
acknowledged that birds are the closest living relatives to crocodiles.
Birds and crocodiles represent the only archosaurian survivors of the mass
extinction at the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary. On the basis of
mitochondrial protein- coding genes, the Haemothermia hypothesis, which
defines birds and mammals as sister groups and thus challenges the
traditional view, could be rejected. Maximum-likelihood branch length data
of amino acid sequences suggest that the divergence between the avian and
crocodilian lineages took place at approximately equal to 254 MYA.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
The complete mitochondrial genome of Alligator mississippiensis and the separation between recent archosauria (birds and crocodiles)
Department of Genetics, University of Lund, Sweden. axel.janke@gen.lu.se
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