Interspecific variation in mitochondrial serine transfer RNA (UCN) in Euptychiina butterflies (Lepidoptera: Satyrinae): Structure and alignment

Abstract

The nucleotide variation and structural patterns of mitochondrial RNA molecule have been proposed as useful tools in molecular systematics; however, their usefulness is always subject to a proper assessment of homology in the sequence alignment. The present study describes the secondary structure of mitochondrial tRNA for the amino acid serine (UCN) on 13 Euptychiina species and the evaluation of its potential use for evolutionary studies in this group of butterflies. The secondary structure of tRNAs showed variation among the included species except between Hermeuptychia sp1 and sp2. Variation was concentrated in the ribotimidina-pseudouridine-cystosine (TψC), dihydrouridine (DHU) and variable loops and in the DHU and TψC arms. These results suggest this region as a potential marker useful for taxonomic differentiation of species in this group and also confirm the importance of including information from the secondary structure of tRNA to optimize the alignments.

Keywords::

• Structural alignment
• molecular taxonomy
• DNA homology
• Nymphalidae

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Luz Miryam Gomez for her assistance in laboratory and reviewers for the suggestions made to manuscript. This work was supported by the Dirección de investigaciones DIME (20101009543) Universidad Nacional de Colombia – Medellín and the Fundación BBVA (MARIPOSA Proyect: BIOCON08_021).

Declarations of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.