Determination and comparison of two complete mitochondrial genomes of golden Chinese loach, Sinibotiasuperciliaris (Teleostei, Cypriniformes)

Abstract

The golden Chinese loach, Sinibotia superciliaris (Günther, 1892) is an endemic fish in China, which is only distributed in the main river and tributaries of the upper and middle Yangtze River. In this study, we sequenced two mitochondrial genomes simultaneously from two samples of S. superciliaris collected from two different locations. Both mitogenomes were 16,572 bp in length, showing a typical vertebrate mitogenome feature with 13 protein-coding genes, 22 transfer RNAs, 2 ribosomal RNAs, and 1 major non-coding control region (CR). Alignment and comparative analyses showed that the two mitogenome sequences possessed 22 mutation sites, all of which were transitions and mainly occurred in protein-coding genes (13/22) and CR (7/22). Among the 13 mutation sites that occurred in protein-coding genes, three mutation sites occurred in the first codon position and the remaining 10 sites occurred in the third codon position. However, only one mutation that occurred in the first codon position resulted in non-synonymous substitution in COI gene. The molecular data presented in this study will contribute to further phylogenetic analyses for this group of fishes.

Keywords::

• Cypriniformes
• Cobitidae
• Sinibotia superciliaris
• mitochondrial genome

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Dr Biwen Xie and Dr Xingjian Yue for providing fish specimens for comparison.

Declaration of interest: The project was sponsored by the Special Fund for Agro-scientific Research in the Public Interest of China (200903048-08) and the Scientific Research Foundation for the Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars (Ministry of Education). The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.