The mitochondrial genome of the scallop Mimachlamys senatoria (Bivalvia, Pectinidae)

Abstract

The mitochondrial (mt) genome of the scallop Mimachlamys senatoria (17,383 bp), an economically and ecologically important bivalve, was newly sequenced and annotated. Comparative analyses between M. senatoria and its congeneric sister species M. nobilis revealed three new findings: (1) M. senatoria is more prone to use G-rich start/stop codon, and variation in start/stop codon usage is species-correlated rather than gene-correlated, and in some extent, bears useful phylogenetic information; (2) The A + T content is unexpectedly low (54.1%) in MNR and that is unexpectedly high (65.4%) in atp8 in both congeneric scallops, which may represent a novel evolutionary pattern of mt genomic nucleotide composition; and (3) The tRNA gene cluster “NGV” locating upstream of the nad1 in M. senatoria is replaced by “NTGV” in M. nobilis, and a parsimonious explanation for the existence of trnT in M. nobilis is that this gene was derived from a recently duplicated trnG gene via an alloacceptor tRNA gene recruitment process.

• A + T content
• Mimachlamys senatoria
• mitochondrial genome
• start codon
• stop codon

Declaration of interest

This work was financially supported by a National Science Foundation of China (No. 40906077), a Knowledge Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. SQ200804) and the earmarked fund for Modern Agro-industry Technology Research System. The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the article.