MBE Advance Access published online on April 9, 2009
Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msp072
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Research Article |
Characterisation Of 67 Mitochondrial tRNA Gene Rearrangements In The Hymenoptera Suggests That Mitochondrial tRNA Gene Position Is Selectively Neutral
1 Centre for Biomedical Sciences, School of Biological Sciences, University of Wollongong, NSW, 2522, Australia
2 Australian National Insect Collection and CSIRO Entomology, Black Mountain Laboratories, PO Box 1700, Canberra, A.C.T., 2601, Australia
3 Australian Center for Evolutionary Biology and Biodiversity, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Adelaide, S.A., 5005, Australia
4 Department of Biology, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, 84602, USA
Corresponding author: Telephone: 612 42 215653; Fax: 612 42 214135; email: mdowton{at}uow.edu.au
Received for publication February 25, 2009. Revision received April 6, 2009. Accepted for publication April 6, 2009.
We present entire sequences of two hymenopteran mitochondrial genomes, and the major portion of three others. We combined this data with nine previously sequenced hymenopteran mitochondrial genomes. This allowed us to infer and analyse the evolution of the 67 mitochondrial gene rearrangements so far found in this order. All of these involve tRNA genes, while four also involve larger (protein-coding or ribosomal RNA) genes. We find that the vast majority of mitochondrial gene rearrangements are independently derived. A maximum of four of these rearrangements represent shared, derived organizations, while three are convergently derived. The remaining mitochondrial gene rearrangements represent new mitochondrial genome organizations. These data are consistent with the proposal that there are an enormous number of alternative mitochondrial genome organizations possible, and that mitochondrial genome organization is, for the most part, selectively neutral. Nevertheless, some mitochondrial genes appear less mobile than others. Genes close to the noncoding region are generally more mobile, but only marginally so. Some mitochondrial genes rearrange in a pattern consistent with the duplication/random loss model, but more mitochondrial genes move in a pattern inconsistent with this model. An increased rate of mitochondrial gene rearrangement is not tightly associated with the evolution of parasitism. Although parasitic lineages tend to have more mitochondrial gene rearrangements than non-parasitic lineages, there are exceptions (e.g. Orussus and Schlettererius). It is likely that only a small proportion of the total number of mitochondrial gene rearrangements that have occurred during the evolution of the Hymenoptera have been sampled in the present study.
Key Words: duplication/random loss • tRNA gene • selectively neutral • mitochondrial genome • Hymenoptera
* These authors contributed equally to this work
CiteULike 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|
 |
|
  A. R. Jex, R. S. Hall, D. T. J. Littlewood, and R. B. Gasser An integrated pipeline for next-generation sequencing and annotation of mitochondrial genomes Nucleic Acids Res., November 5, 2009; (2009) gkp883v1. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|