The complete mitochondrial genome of Minous monodactylus (Minoinae: Synanceiidae: Scorpaeniformes) and phylogenetic studies of Scorpaeniformes

Abstract

In the present study, the complete mitochondrial genome of Minous monodactylus was identified and analyzed. Its mitochondrial genome is a circular molecule of 16,458 bp, which contains 13 protein-coding, 22 transfer RNA (tRNA) and 2 ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes. The composition of the whole genome is A: 27.7%, G: 17.3%, C: 27.2%, and T: 27.8%. For start codon, all other protein-coding genes start with ATG except NAD1 and NAD5 (ATA). For stop codon, there are four different stop codons (TAG, TAA, AGA, AGG) corresponding to different protein-coding genes. Phylogenetic analysis of Scorpaeniformes showed that M. monodactylus is closely related to Synanceia verrucose.

Keywords:

• Minous monodactylus
• mitochondrial genome
• Scorpaeniformes
• phylogenetic analysis

Minous monodactylus, which belongs to Minoinae, Synanceiidae, Scorpaeniformes, is distributed in the Indo-West Pacific particularly the Red Sea, East Africa to Indonesia, and north to southern Japan (Fishbase 2019). It is found near shore, in sand bottoms at 10–55 m (Rocha 1938), and inhabits soft bottoms of the continental shelf. Generally, it has anterolateral glandular grooves with venom gland (Smith and Wheeler 2006). Although M. monodactylus is a common species, there are few understandings of its genetic information. The only study of the species is about biological property (Cui 2010). The information about mitochondrial DNA plays an important role in species identification and phylogenetic analysis. So, the complete mitochondrial genome of M. monodactylus was used as a tool to help us understand its genetic information. As far as we know, this study is the first to report the complete mitochondrial genome of M. monodactylus.

The sample of M. monodactylus was collected from the East China Sea (30°30′43″N, 123°48′37″E) and stored in a refrigerator at −80 °C. Mitochondrial DNA was extracted from muscle tissues through the phenol-chloroform method (Barnett and Larson 2012). Its quality was checked by 1% agarose, and then the PCR method was used to amplify it. The PCR products were sequenced by Illumina HiSeq™ 2000 platform (Illumina, San Diego, CA, USA). After annotation and assembly, the sequence of the complete mitochondrial genome of M. monodactylus was deposited into the GenBank database (accession number: MK613995).

The complete mitochondrial genome of M. monodactylus was 16,458 bp in length, consisting of 13 protein-coding genes, 22 transfer RNA (tRNA) genes, 2 ribosomal RNA genes (12S rRNA and 16S rRNA), and 1 D-loop region of 827 bp. The base composition of the mitochondrial DNA is A: 27.7%, G: 17.3%, C: 27.2%, and T: 27.8%. The A + T content (55.5%) is higher than G + C content, which is the same as other Scorpaeniformes mitogenomes (Jang et al. 2016; Wang et al. 2016). For start codon, 11 protein-coding genes start with ATG except for NAD1 and NAD5 with ATA. For end codon, 2 protein-coding genes (NAD3 and NAD6) end with TAG, 9 protein-coding genes (NAD1, NAD2, NAD5, NAD4L, COX I, COX III, ATP6, ATP8, CYTB) end with TAA. In addition, ND4 and COX II end with AGG and AGA, respectively. The 12S rRNA is found between tRNA^Phe and tRNA^Val, and 16S rRNA is found between tRNA^Val and tRNA^Leu.

For analyzing the phylogenetic position of M. monodactylus, the complete mitochondrion genome of 13 species from different families (Sebastidae, Pteroinae, Hexagrammidae, Triglidae, Scorpaenidae, Synanceiidae) of Scorpaeniformes was obtained from the NCBI database. Then 13 protein-coding genes were used to construct the phylogenetic tree by the neighbor-joining method (Saitou and Nei 1987). And Erpetoichthys calabaricus (GenBank accession number: AY442348) was used as an outgroup (Figure 1). Phylogenetic analysis indicated that M. monodactylus is closely related to Synanceia verrucose. Furthermore, the phylogenetic tree exhibited that each family used for analysis is monophyletic. We believed that the data and related analysis in the study can deepen our understanding of the genetic diversity of Scorpaeniformes.

Figure 1. The neighbor-joining (NJ) tree for Minous monodactylus and other species of Scorpaeniformes. Bootstrap values of 1000 replicates are shown beside each code. The black dot represents the species in our study. And the number after species name is the Genbank accession number.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province [LQ18D060004], the Open Foundation from Fishery Sciences in the First-Class Subjects of Zhejiang [20160002, 20160017], the 2017 Scientific Research Startup Foundation of Zhejiang Ocean University [12245090318], and the Science and Technology Project of Zhoushan City [2018C21015]