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MBE Advance Access published online on February 21, 2008
Molecular Biology and Evolution, 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

Letter

Inverted replication of vertebrate mitochondria

Miguel M. Fonseca1,2,3,*, David Posada3 and D. James Harris1,2

1 CIBIO, Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos, Campus Agrário de Vairão, R. Padre Armando Quintas, 4485-661 Vairão. Portugal
2 Departamento de Zoologia e Antropologia, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade do Porto, 4099-002 Porto. Portugal
3 Departamento de Bioquímica, Genética e Inmunología, Facultad de Biología, Universidad de Vigo, 36310 Vigo, Spain

* Corresponding Author: Miguel M. Fonseca, CIBIO, Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos, Campus Agrário de Vairão, R. Padre Armando Quintas, 4485-661 Vairão. Portugal.phone: (351) 252 660 411; fax: (351) 252 661 780, mmfonseca{at}mail.icav.up.pt

Received for publication December 3, 2007. Revision received January 18, 2008. Accepted for publication February 15, 2008.

After analyzing the base composition asymmetry of coding regions in vertebrate mitochondria, we identified two fishes, Albula glossodonta and Bathygadus antrodes, with inverted compositional patterns. Both species appear to have an unusual control region, 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 control region. 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 control region.

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


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