Abstract
The Pearl-banded rat-snake Elaphe perlacea (recently renamed Euprepiophis perlacea) belongs to the family Colubridae, and is only distributed in western Sichuan Province, China. In this study, the whole mitochondrial genome of E. perlacea was first sequenced. It was determined to be 17,160 bp and included 13 protein-coding genes, 2 rRNA genes, 22 tRNA genes and 2 control regions (D-loop). Except for eight tRNAs and nd6 genes, all other mitochondrial genes were encoded on the heavy strand (H strand). Molecular data presented here provide a useful tool for helping set the stage for further studies and the molecular evolution of the mitochondrial genome.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Shaolong Liu for collecting specimens.
Declaration of interest
The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper. The project is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation (30370182) and the specimen platform of China, teaching specimens sub-platform (2005DKA21403-JK), Web, http://mnh.scu.edu.cn/.