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Abstract
The toad-headed lizards of genus Phrynocephalus are one of the most prevalent animals in the central Asian desert. A few studies have investigated molecular phylogenesis of Phrynocephalus, yet yield inconsistent results. Moreover, these studies were only based on a few specific DNA fragments of mitochondrial genome. To facilitate the clarification of molecular phylogenesis of Phrynocephalus, we conducted this study to sequence the entire mitochondrial genome of the Phrynocephalus helioscopus collected from Northwest China. The length of complete mitochondrial DNA is 16,249 nucleotides, consisting of 13 protein-coding genes, 22 transfer RNA genes, 2 ribosomal RNA genes, and 2 control regions (CR). The gene arrangement and composition of P. helioscopus resemble those of other Phrynocephalus sand lizard, except for P. przewalskii and P. versicolor. The overall A, T, C, G base composition of the heavy-strand was 35.9%, 26.4%, 25.2%, 12.5%, respectively, which is biased toward AT (about 62.3%). The AT-biased base composition was similar to what observed in most vertebrates. The complete mitochondrial genome of P. helioscopus may help to clarify the phylogenetic relationships related to Phrynocephalus oviparity.
Acknowledgements
We thank Xiao-Yu Zou and Fang-Qing Liu for technical support.
Declaration of interest
The authors report no conflict of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the article. This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81171174) and the Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University (PCSIRT: IRT1137).
Notice of Correction:
In the original version of this article published online ahead of print on 16 October 2014, the GenBank accession number was incorrectly written as KM093859. This has been corrected in this version. The authors and editors apologise for any inconvenience caused.