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MBE Advance Access originally published online on February 21, 2008
Molecular Biology and Evolution 2008 25(5):805-808; doi:10.1093/molbev/msn050
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Letters

Inverted Replication of Vertebrate Mitochondria

Miguel M. Fonseca*,{dagger},{ddagger}, David Posada{ddagger} and D. James Harris*,{dagger}

* CiBiO/UP, Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos, Vairão, Portugal
{dagger} Departamento de Zoologia e Antropologia, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal
{ddagger} Departamento de Bioquímica, Genética e Inmunología, Facultad de Biología, Universidad de Vigo, Vigo, Spain

E-mail: mmfonseca{at}mail.icav.up.pt.

Accepted for publication February 15, 2008.

After analyzing the base composition asymmetry of coding regions in vertebrate mitochondria, we identified 2 fishes, Albula glossodonta and Bathygadus antrodes, with inverted compositional patterns. Both species appear to have an unusual control region (CR), and in B. antrodes, it has switched from the light strand to the heavy strand. To our knowledge, this is the first report in vertebrates of inverted mitochondrial replication, caused by an inversion of the CR. These findings support the strand-asymmetric model of mtDNA replication and suggest that vertebrate mtDNA can tolerate globally reversed mutational pressures. In addition, we propose that nucleotide bias is not strand specific but that it depends on the location of the CR.

Key Words: mtDNA • control region • inversion • strand bias • replication mechanism • vertebrates

Franz Lang, Associate Editor


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