The complete mitochondrial genome of the invasive Ponto-Caspian goby Ponticola kessleri obtained from high-throughput sequencing using the Ion Torrent Personal Genome Machine

Abstract

We report the first complete mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) of an invasive Ponto-Caspian goby, Ponticola kessleri (bighead goby, Günther 1891). Ion Torrent PGM sequencing of total DNA from two individuals yielded a contig of 16,971 bp, with overlapping ends located in the repetitive control region, which was validated using Sanger sequencing. The final mitogenome of Ponticola kessleri has a size of 16,890 bp and contains the expected gene configuration of 13 protein-coding genes, 2 rRNA genes and 22 tRNA genes. In a comparison with complete mitogenomes from other goby species, we identified a translocation of tRNA-Glu in the mitogenome of P. kessleri. Rearrangements are unique and rare events, and can thus provide phylogenetic information.

• Bighead goby
• high throughput sequencing
• invasive
• mitochondrial genome
• Ponticola kessleri
• Rhine

Acknowledgements

We thank the organizers and instructors of the course “High Throughput Sequencing of non-model organisms” at the University of Nordland, Norway (June 2014), during which we obtained the short read data. In particular we are grateful to Truls Moum, Steinar D. Johansen for organizing the course, Tor Erik Jörgensen, and Anita Ursvik for instructions in the lab, and Maike Herrmann for lab assistance.

Declaration of interest

The authors declare that there are no potential conflicts of interest.

Notice of Correction:

In the original version of this article, published online ahead of print on 20 October 2014, the GenBank accession number was incorrectly written as ‘GenBank accession ID: 1758500'. This has been corrected in this version. The editors sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused.