The complete mitochondrial genome of the small-toothed forest hedgehog Mesechinus miodon (Eulipotyphla: Erinaceidae)

Abstract

The complete mitochondrial genome of the small-toothed forest hedgehog Mesechinus miodon (Eulipotyphla: Erinaceidae) has been reconstructed from Illumina sequencing data. The circular genome is 16 842 bp long, comprising 22 transfer RNAs (tRNAs), 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), two ribosomal RNAs (rRNAs), and one control region. All PCGs are initiated with ATR (ATA/ATG) codons, except for nad4 with GTG as its initiation codon. Two PCGs (cox3 and nad4) harbor an incomplete termination codon T, while the others are terminated with TAA (atp6, cox1, cox2, nad1, nad2, nad3, nad4l, nad5, and nad6), TAG (atp8) or AGA (cytb). The base composition is highly biased (34.9% A, 19.7% C, 11.9% G, and 33.5% T for the light strand) with an overall A + T content of 68.4%. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that M. miodon is more closely related to the consubfamilial long-eared hedgehog Hemiechinus auritus than to those within the order Eulipotyphla.

Keywords:

• Hedgehog
• illumina sequencing
• mitogenome
• next-generation sequencing

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Prof. Xing-Zhong Yang, Zhi-Xuan Li, Prof. Xiao-Ping Yu, Prof. Xiao-Chen Li, Prof. Chang-Hong Shi, Cai-E Hu, Huai-Jie Li, Shi-Xiong Yang, Prof. Xiao-Min Wu, Zhi-Wu Jiang, Rui-Ye Dang, Jie Chen, and Guang-Ping Zhang for their kind assistance during the research.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper. This study was financially supported by the Sci-Tech Research Program of Shaanxi Academy of Sciences (2014K-16).