Novel organization of the mitochondrial genome in the deep-sea coral, Madrepora oculata (Hexacorallia, Scleractinia, Oculinidae) and its taxonomic implications

Journal Publication ResearchOnline@JCU
Lin, Mei-Fang;Kitahara, Marcelo Visentini;Tachikawa, Hiroyuki;Fukami, Hironobu;Miller, David John;Chen, Chaolun Allen
Abstract

Madrepora is one of the most ecologically important genera of reef-building scleractinians in the deep sea, occurring from tropical to high-latitude regions. Despite this, the taxonomic affinities and relationships within the genus Madrepora remain unclear. To clarify these issues, we sequenced the mitochondrial (mt) genome of the most widespread Madrepora species, M. oculata, and compared this with data for other scleractinians. The architecture of the M. oculara mt genome was very similar to that of other scleractinians, except for a novel gene rearrangement affecting only cox2 and cox3. This pattern of gene organization was common to four geographically distinct M. oculata individuals as well as the congeneric species M. minutiseptum, but was not shared by other genera that are closely related on the basis of cox1 sequence analysis nor other oculinids, suggesting that it might be unique to Madrepora.

Journal

Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution

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Volume

65

ISBN/ISSN

1095-9513

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Issue

1

Pages Count

6

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Publisher

Elsevier

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EISSN

N/A

DOI

10.1016/j.ympev.2012.06.011