The complete mitochondrial genome of Percocypris pingi (Teleostei, Cypriniformes)

Abstract

Percocypris pingi is an endemic and economic fish species only found in the upper Yangtze River basin in China. It has become endangered in recent years due to overfishing and/or dam construction. However, the available genetic data are still scarce for this species. Here, we sequenced the complete mitochondrial genome sequence of P. pingi using long polymerase chain reactions. The complete mitogenome sequence has 16,586 bp and contains the usual 13 protein-coding genes, 2 ribosomal RNA genes, 22 transfer RNA (tRNA) genes, and 1 control region, the gene composition and order of which are similar to most of other vertebrates. Most mitochondrial genes except ND6 and eight tRNAs are encoded on the heavy strand. The overall base composition of the heavy strand is 30.9% A, 25.7% T, 26.6% C, and 16.8% G with a slight AT bias of 56.6%. There are seven regions of gene overlaps totaling 23 bp and 11 intergenic spacer regions totaling 35 bp. Combined with the COI barcoding region sequences of other 25 cyprinids, the phylogenetic position of P. pingi was estimated using neighbor-joining method. The results showed that P. pingi had a close phylogenetic relationship with the species from genus Schizothorax. This mitogenome sequence data of P. pingi would provide the fundamental genetic data for further conservation genetic studies for this endangered fish species.

Keywords::

• Cypriniformes
• Cyprinidae
• Percocypris pingi
• Schizothorax
• mitogenome

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Dr Zhijian Wang and Jianhua Yi for the sample collections. The authors also thank Ping Li, Dandan Xu, Qing Zeng, and Yan Huang for the assistance with the laboratory work.

Declarations of interest: This work was supported by the grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31071903) 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.