Abstract
In this study, we sequenced the complete mitochondrial genome of Black-headed Sibia. The total length was 17864 bp, which contained 13 protein-coding genes(PCGs), 22 tRNA genes, 2 rRNA genes, and 2 control regions (D-loop). Eight tRNA genes with one PCG(ND6) encoded on the L-strand, others were encoded on the H-strand. The neighbor-joining analysis shows that Black-headed Sibia has a close relationship with the genus of Leiothrix and Minla. This study had further provided a proof for the genetics and evolution of Black-headed Sibia.
Heterophasia melanoleuca (Passeriformes, Timaliinae) also known as Black-headed Sibia, is one of the members of Timaliinae (John et al. Citation2000; Zheng Citation2002). In China, this resident bird is mainly distributed in the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, the southern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau and Hengduan Mountains (Duan Citation2012; Yan et al. Citation2017). The wild populations of Black-headed Sibia have an extremely large range, so it was classified as least concern species by International Union for Conservation of Nature (The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species Citation2017). At present, the mitochondrial genome of Black-headed Sibia still have no reports, hence our study reported its entire mitochondrial genome data, which had supplemented the mitochondrial genome data of the subfamily Timaliinae.
The samples were collected from Ya'an (120°59′E, 29°58′N) and stored in Zoology laboratory of Sichuan Agricultural University. The total genomic DNA was extracted from muscles using phenol-chloroform extraction method (Sambrook et al. Citation1990). The mitochondrial genome of Black-headed Sibia was amplified and sequenced by 22 pairs of primers designed based on the conservative regions of Red-tailed Minla (KT995474). The sequences date were edited and assembled by DNAstar (Swayne et al. Citation2015) and the phylogenetic tree was constructed using MAGE7.0 (Kumar et al. Citation2016).
The complete mitochondrial genome of Black-headed Sibia is 17864 bp (Genebank: MK408609), including 13 protein-coding genes(PCGs), 22 tRNA genes, 2 rRNA genes, and 2 control regions (D-loop), which is similar to other species of Timaliidae (Li et al. Citation2016). The base composition of mtDNA is A (30.44%), G (14.27%), T (23.26%), C (32.03%), so the percentage of A + T (53.69%) is higher than G + C (46.31%), like Rusty Laughingthrush, A-T bias is more significant (Qi et al. 2015). Among the 13 PCGs, the longest one is 1817 bp (ND5) and the shortest is 168 bp (ATP8). All of PCGs used ATG as the start codon. Six PCGs terminated with TAA, while AGG for COI and TAG for ND6. The incomplete stop codon (TA–, T– or AG–) were observed in ND1, ND2, ND3, ND4, ND5, and COIII. There were eight tRNA genes (tRNAGln, tRNAAla, tRNAAsn, tRNACys, tRNATyr, tRNASer, tRNAPro, tRNAGlu) with one PCG (ND6) encoded on the L-strand, and the other PCGs encoded on the H-strand. The 12srRNA and 16s rRNA were located between tRNAphe and tRNAleu, which was separated by tRNAval. In sequence, we find two control region (CR), that CR1 is located between tRNAThr and tRNAPro, and CR2 is between tRNAGlu and tRNAPro.
Phylogenetic tree was constructed with other 12 species from Timaliidae, using Aratinga rubritorquis as an outgroup (). The phylogenetic analysis shows that Black-headed Sibia has a close relationship with Leiothrix argentauris, Leiothrix Lutea, and Minla ignotincla which belong to genus Leiothrix and Minla, and the topology structure was consistent with the previous study (Luo et al. Citation2009). This study provides a new opinion of the genetics and evolution in the species of Timaliinae.
Figure 1. Neibour-joining(NJ) phylogenetic tree constructed based on 13 protein coding genes of Black-headed Sibia and other 12 Timaliinae species, using Aratinga rubritorquis as an outgroup and numbers at the branches indicated the bootstrapping values with 1000 replications. Solid triangle represents a sequence in this study.
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The authors declare no conflicts of interest and are alone responsible for the content and writing of the paper.
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References
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