The complete mitochondrial genome of the Japanese honeybee, Apis cerana japonica (Insecta: Hymenoptera: Apidae)

Jun-Ichi Takahashi; Takeshi Wakamiya; Takuya Kiyoshi; Hironobu Uchiyama; Shunsuke Yajima; Kiyoshi Kimura; Tetsuro Nomura

doi:10.1080/23802359.2016.1144108

The complete mitochondrial genome of the Japanese honeybee, Apis cerana japonica (Insecta: Hymenoptera: Apidae)

Mitochondrial DNA B Resour. 2016 Feb 10;1(1):156-157. doi: 10.1080/23802359.2016.1144108.

Authors

Jun-Ichi Takahashi¹, Takeshi Wakamiya¹, Takuya Kiyoshi², Hironobu Uchiyama³, Shunsuke Yajima^{3

4}, Kiyoshi Kimura⁵, Tetsuro Nomura¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Life Sciences, Kyoto Sangyo University, Kyoto, Japan.
² Department of Zoology, National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo, Japan.
³ NODAI Genome Research Center, Tokyo University of Agriculture, Tokyo, Japan.
⁴ Department of Bioscience, Tokyo University of Agriculture, Tokyo, Japan.
⁵ Honeybee Research Group, Animal Breeding and Reproduction Research Team, National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science, Tsukuba, Japan.

Abstract

In this study, we analyzed the complete mitochondrial genome of the Japanese honeybee Apis cerana japonica. The mitochondrial genome of A. c. japonica is a circular molecule of 15 917 bp and is similar to that of A. c. cerana. It contains 13 protein-coding genes, 22 tRNA genes, two rRNA genes and one A + T-rich control region. All protein-coding genes are initiated by ATT and ATG codons and are terminated by the typical stop codon TAA or TAG, except for the start codon of ATP8 which ends with C. All tRNA genes typically form a cloverleaf secondary structure, except for tRNA-Ser (AGN).

Keywords: Apis cerana; Asian honeybee; Illumina sequencing; genetic distance; subspecies.