Abstract
The complete mitochondrial genome sequence of the Aetobatus flagellum is 20,201 bp long and consists of 13 protein-coding genes, 22 tRNA genes, 2 rRNA genes and 1 control region (CR). The base composition of the genome is 30.9% A, 28.2% T, 27.1% C and 13.8% G. Comparing mtDNA of elasmobranchs submitted in NCBI, our study not only identified the longest mitochondrial genome with 4490 bp CR in A. flagellum, but also strongly revealed that records in the northwest Pacific may belong to a separate species from those distributed in Indonesia.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Dr. Nong Zhang, Ms. Hui Wang, Xia Luo, Mr. Tao Pan and Xin Huang for their help with laboratory work and specimen collection.
Declaration of interest
The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing style of the article. This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 30970321 and 31272287), the JSPS Invitation Fellowship Program for Research in Japan and Graduate Student Academic Innovation Research Project of Anhui University (01001770-10117700141).