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MBE Advance Access published online on October 1, 2009
Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msp234
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© The Author 2009. 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

Letter

Hyper-variability of ascidian mitochondrial gene order: exposing the myth of deuterostome organelle genome stability

Carmela Gissi*,1, Graziano Pesole§, Francesco Mastrototaro{ddagger}, Fabio Iannelli*, Vanessa Guida* and Francesca Griggio*

* Dipartimento di Scienze Biomolecolari e Biotecnologie, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milano, Italy
{ddagger} Dipartimento di Zoologia, Università di Bari, Bari, Italy
§ Dipartimento di Biochimica e Biologia Molecolare "E. Quagliariello", Università di Bari, Bari, Italy, and Istituto Tecnologie Biomediche, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Bari, Italy

1 Corresponding author: Carmela Gissi, Dipartimento di Scienze Biomolecolari e Biotecnologie, Università di Milano, Via Celoria 26, 20133 Milano, Italy, Tel: +39 02 50314918; Fax: +39 02 50314912, E-mail: carmela.gissi{at}unimi.it

Received for publication May 19, 2009. Revision received August 7, 2009. Revision received September 23, 2009. Accepted for publication September 28, 2009.

The few sequenced mitochondrial (mt) genomes of the class Ascidiacea (Chordata, Tunicata), mostly belonging to congeneric species of the Phlebobranchia order, show extraordinary gene order rearrangements. In order to assess if this hypervariability in gene order is a general feature of Ascidiacea, we here report the gene arrangement of five ascidians belonging to the Aplousobranchia and Stolidobranchia orders. Our data show that Ascidiacea are characterized by: (1) extensive gene order rearrangements both within and between the three major lineages; (2) lack of significant similarities to the gene order of other deuterostomes; and (3) an extent of rearrangements comparable to that of Mollusca (especially the Gastropoda, Bivalvia and Scaphopoda classes), a phylum with highly-rearranged mtDNAs. The only conserved feature is the location of all genes on the same strand, which suggests that selective constrains are related to the mt transcription. Finally, a higher mobility of the tRNA genes is undetectable because of saturation effect, and only the partially conserved cox2-cob gene block seems to retain some phylogenetic signals.

Key Words: gene order • mitochondrial genome • rearrangements • ascidians


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