Comparative mitogenomics of the assassin bug genus Peirates (Hemiptera: Reduviidae: Peiratinae) reveal conserved mitochondrial genome organization of P. atromaculatus, P. fulvescens and P. turpis

Guangyu Zhao; Hu Li; Ping Zhao; Wanzhi Cai

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0117862

Comparative mitogenomics of the assassin bug genus Peirates (Hemiptera: Reduviidae: Peiratinae) reveal conserved mitochondrial genome organization of P. atromaculatus, P. fulvescens and P. turpis

PLoS One. 2015 Feb 17;10(2):e0117862. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0117862. eCollection 2015.

Authors

Guangyu Zhao¹, Hu Li², Ping Zhao³, Wanzhi Cai⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Entomology, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China; Daxing No.1 Middle School, Beijing, China.
² Department of Entomology, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China; Department of Ornamental Horticulture, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China.
³ College of Environment and Life Sciences, Kaili University, Kaili, Guizhou, China.
⁴ Department of Entomology, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China.

Abstract

In this study, we sequenced four new mitochondrial genomes and presented comparative mitogenomic analyses of five species in the genus Peirates (Hemiptera: Reduviidae). Mitochondrial genomes of these five assassin bugs had a typical set of 37 genes and retained the ancestral gene arrangement of insects. The A+T content, AT- and GC-skews were similar to the common base composition biases of insect mtDNA. Genomic size ranges from 15,702 bp to 16,314 bp and most of the size variation was due to length and copy number of the repeat unit in the putative control region. All of the control region sequences included large tandem repeats present in two or more copies. Our result revealed similarity in mitochondrial genomes of P. atromaculatus, P. fulvescens and P. turpis, as well as the highly conserved genomic-level characteristics of these three species, e.g., the same start and stop codons of protein-coding genes, conserved secondary structure of tRNAs, identical location and length of non-coding and overlapping regions, and conservation of structural elements and tandem repeat unit in control region. Phylogenetic analyses also supported a close relationship between P. atromaculatus, P. fulvescens and P. turpis, which might be recently diverged species. The present study indicates that mitochondrial genome has important implications on phylogenetics, population genetics and speciation in the genus Peirates.

Publication types

Comparative Study
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Animals
Base Sequence
Codon / genetics
Conserved Sequence*
Gene Order
Genes, Insect / genetics
Genome, Mitochondrial / genetics*
Genomics*
Nucleotides / genetics
Phylogeny
RNA, Ribosomal / genetics
RNA, Transfer / genetics
Reduviidae / classification
Reduviidae / genetics*

Substances

Codon
Nucleotides
RNA, Ribosomal
RNA, Transfer

Grants and funding

This research is supported by grants from the National Basic Research Program of China (No. 2013CB127600), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31372229), the Beijing Natural Science Foundation (No. 6152016), the Special Fund for Agroscientific Research in the Public Interest (Nos. 201103012, 201103022, 201303024), the National Key Technology R & D Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology (No. 2012BAD19B00) and the Special Fund for Scientific Research (No. 2012FY111100) for Wanzhi Cai; and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31401991), the Beijing Natural Science Foundation (No. 6144027), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Nos. 2013M540167, 2014T70145) and the Chinese Universities Scientific Fund (No. 2014BH021) for Hu Li; and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31201737) for Ping Zhao. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.