The complete mitochondrial genome of the melon fly Bactrocera cucurbitae (Diptera: Tephritidae)

Abstract

The mitochondrial genome of Bactrocera cucurbitae, a representative of the Tephritid family, was completely sequenced for the first time. The B. cucurbitae genome is a double-stranded circular molecule of 15,825 bp long, including the entire set of the 37 genes. The 72.9% A+T content and 0.047 AT-skew are within the range of the known dipteran genomes. Comparative analyses showed that dipteran mitochondrial protein-coding genes present complex evolutionary patterns. Some of the codon families were strongly biased towards J-strand. The mitochondrial ATP8 of B. cucurbitae exhibited a faster substitution rate than other genes. Cox1 is the slowest evolving protein and could be considered as a potential phylogenetic marker.

Keywords::

• Mitochondrial genome
• Bactrocera cucurbitae
• protein-coding genes
• codon usage

Acknowledgements

We express our sincere thanks to Jian-Hong Liu (College of Forestry, Southwest Forestry University, Kunming, China) who kindly provided the specimen of B. cucurbitae used in the present study. We are grateful to anonymous referees for providing invaluable comments and suggestions.

Declaration of interest This study was supported by Key Laboratory of Forest Disaster Warning and Control in Yunnan Province and Key Subject Forest Protection of Yunnan Province (No. XKZ200905). The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.