The complete mitochondrial genome of a Chinese endemic stonefly species, Sinacroneuria dabieshana (Plecoptera: Perlidae)

Abstract

The complete mitochondrial genome of Sinacroneuria dabieshana Li & Murányi, the first representative of the genus Sinacroneuria, was sequenced and annotated. This mitogenome was 15,752 bp long and encoded 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 22 transfer RNA genes (tRNAs), two ribosomal RNA genes and a control region. The S. dabieshana mitogenome with an A + T content of 67.3% presented a positive AT-skew (0.058) and a negative GC-skew (−0.303). Ten PCGs started with a typical ATN codon, except ATP8, COI and ND1 initiated with GTG, CCG and TTG, respectively. Eleven PCGs use the typical stop codon TAA/TAG, except COII and ND5 gene terminated with a single T. The Bayesian (BI) and maximum-likelihood (ML) trees both showed that S. dabieshana and Acroneuria hainana are the sister group. Phylogenetic relationships among six genera within Perlidae were recovered as (Caroperla + ((Acroneuria + Sinacroneuria) + (Dinocras + (Togoperla + Kamimuria)))).

Keywords:

• Perlidae
• phylogeny
• mitogenome
• Sinacroneuria dabieshana

Yang and Yang (1995) established the genus Sinacroneuria in the subfamily Acroneuriinae. The genus Sinacroneuria contains 11 species and is primarily distributed in China (DeWalt et al. 2019). Li et al. (2014) described the species of S. dabieshana from Henan and Hubei Province of central China, which represents the northernmost distribution of the genus in China. As far as we know, no mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) sequences belonging to genus Sinacroneuria has been published. In this paper, the complete mitogenome sequence of S. dabieshana (GenBank accession no. MK492253) was reported at the first time.

The specimen of S. dabieshana was collected by Weihai Li at Dabie Mountains, Henan Province, China in 2015. Samples and voucher specimens were deposited in Henan institute of Science and Technology (HIST), China. The total genomic DNA was extracted from adult’s thorax muscle using the QIAamp DNA Mini Kit (QIAGEN, Hilden, Germany) and sequenced by high-throughput sequencing method. Annotation of the complete mitogenome was amplified and sequenced as described in published studies (Li et al. 2017; Wang et al. 2017, 2018; Liu et al. 2018; Cao et al. 2019). We assembled the sequence reads into contigs using the BioEdit version 7.0.5.3 (Hall 1999).

The mitogenome of S. dabieshana was 15,752 bp in length, which contained 22 transfer RNA genes (tRNAs), 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), two ribosomal RNA genes (rRNAs) and a putative control region. The gene order and organization of S. dabieshana are consistent with those of putative ancestor of insects (Boore 1999). The nucleotide composition of S. dabieshana mitogenome was 35.6% of A, 31.7% of T, 21.3% of C, 11.4% of G, 67.3% of A + T content. The A + T content of PCGs, tRNAs and rRNAs was 65.7%, 68.8% and 71.3%, respectively. The control region was located between rrnS and tRNA^Ile genes with a length of 851 bp, and the A + T content was 77.5%. The initial codons for ten PCGs of S. dabieshana were the canonical putative start codons ATN, while ATP8 used GTG, COI used CCG and ND1 used TTG as start codon. The typical termination codon (TAA/TAG) occurs in 11 PCGs, and the remaining two PCGs (COII and ND5) were stopped with a single T. All tRNAs had the typical cloverleaf secondary structures except for the tRNA^Ser(AGN) lack of the stem-loop structure of the dihydrouridine (DHU) arm.

The concatenated nucleotide sequences of 13 PCGs and 2 rRNAs from seven Perlidae species and two species (Pteronarcys princeps and Pteronarcella badia as outgroups) were used in phylogenetic analysis to better understand the relationship among Perlidae species. The Bayesian (BI) and maximum-likelihood (ML) analyses generated the phylogenic trees with the same topologies (Figure 1). Result shows S. dabieshana and Acroneuria hainana are the sister group. Phylogenetic relationships among six genera within Perlidae were recovered as (Caroperla + ((Acroneuria + Sinacroneuria) + (Dinocras + (Togoperla + Kamimuria)))). Our result was inconsistent with the traditional morphological classification (Sivec et al. 1988). Additional taxon sampling will be required to resolve this problem.

Figure 1. The Bayesian inference (BI) and maximum-likelihood (ML) trees contain nine species based on the mitogenomic sequence data of 13 PCGs and two rRNAs.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the initial Project of Henan Institute of Science and Technology [Nos. 2014028 and 2015026] and the National Natural Science Foundation of China [No. 31801999].