Abstract
We have determined the complete mitochondrial genome of the endangered butterfly, Luehdorfia taibai. The total lenth of the L. taibai mitogenome is 15,553 bp with 81% A + T content. It consists of 13 protein-coding, 22 tRNA, 2 rRNA genes and an A + T-rich region. All the protein-coding genes used ATN as start codon and TAA as stop codon, except for COI gene, which used CGA as start codon. The A + T-rich region was 939 bp in lenth with 95% A + T content. L. taibai mitogenome contained an extra tRNALeu, located from 191 bp to 259 bp, of which function was not clear.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Dr Yuan Huang (College of Life Sciences, Shaanxi Normal University) for assistance with the analytic software.