Abstract
The mitochondrial genome of the Reticulitermes ovatilabrum is 15,913 bp in length and encodes 37 genes including 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 22 transfer RNA genes (tRNA), 2 ribosomal RNA genes (rRNA), and a non-coding control region (D-loop). The percentage of A/T (65.59%) is much higher than that of C/G (34.41%). The phylogenetic tree revealed that R. ovatilabrum was closest to R. kanmonensi and R. periflaviceps. The mitochondrial genome of the R. ovatilabrum provides a resource for evolutional analysis within termites especially Reticulitermes.
Keywords: Reticulitermes ovatilabrum, mitochondrial genome
Reticulitermes ovatilabrum (Isoptera: Rhinotermitidae) was first reported in Guangxi, China (Xia and Fan 1981; Huang et al. 2000), which has obvious features of Reticulitermes. R. ovatilabrum also contains unique oval labrum which is different from other Reticultitermes species. Here, this study provides the complete mitochondrial genome sequence of R. ovatilabrum.
Specimens were collected from Niutoushan Mountain (East Longitude 119°46′ and North Latitude 28°64′), Zhejiang, China in 2019 and kept in the Insect Lab at Zhejiang A&F University, China (accession number NTS-05). Total genomic DNA was extracted from the heads of 10 worker termites using the Insect DNAKit following the manufacturer’s instructions (Sangon Biotech, Shanghai, China). Fifteen primer pairs were designed to amplify the complete mitogenome by PCR and then sequenced using Sanger sequencing technology. DNA sequences were assembled by Seqman program from DNASTAR, Madison, WI (Lasergene version 7.1). MITOS Web Server was utilized for mitogenome annotation and predicted secondary structure of transfer RNAs (Bernt et al. 2013).
The complete mitochondrial genome sequence of R. ovatilabrum is 15,913 bp in length (GenBank: MW015945). It encodes 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 22 transfer RNA (tRNA) genes, 2 ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes, and a non-coding control region (D-loop). A total of 14 genes are transcribed on the L-strand (nad1, nad4, nad4L, nad5, trnQ, trnC, trnY, trnF, trnH, trnP, trnL1, trnV, rrnS, and rrnL) and other genes are located on the H-strand. The base composition of R. ovatilabrum mitochondrial genome has a high percentage of A/T (65.59%), which was similar to other Reticulitermes (Cameron and Whiting 2007; Liu et al. 2019; Ye et al. 2019). Furthermore, there are 18 intergenic spacers and 8 overlapping regions in R. ovatilabrum mitochondrial genome. The intergenic spacers contain 123 bp and overlapping regions have 47 bp in total, respectively.
PCGs have a total of 11,174 bp in length. The start codons of all PCGs are ATN. Except for nad1 with TAG, cox2 and nad5 with incomplete T as stop codon, the other protein genes all adopt TAA as stop codon. Except trnS1 which lacks the dihydrorubamide (DHU) arm, the remaining 21 tRNAs have typical clover-leaf structures. The 16S rRNA (rrnL) and 12S rRNA (rrnS) gene contains 1327 and 737 bp, respectively. The control region (D-loop) with 1103 bp is located between rrnS and trnI with a high A/T content（68.36%).
The maximum likelihood method based on the all PCG nucleotide sequences was used to analyze the phylogeny of Reticulitermes containing R. ovtilabrum (Guindon et al. 2010). Coptotermes formosanusas (Isoptera: Rhinotermitidae) and Mastotermes darwiniensis (Isoptera: Mastotermitidae) were chosen as the outer groups for phylogenetic analysis. R. ovatilabrum constituted a sister group to R. kanmonensis and R. periflaviceps (Figure 1).
Figure 1.
Maximum Likelihood phylogenetic tree of mitogenomes of Reticulitermes (bootstrap values based on 1000 replicates). Coptotermes formosanusas and Mastotermes darwiniensis were used as outgroups. Branch names were presented as species names and GenBank accession number.
Funding Statement
This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province [No. LZ20C040001] and the Research Foundation of Zhejiang A&F University [2012FR087].
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Data availability statement
The genome sequence data that support the findings of his study are openly available in GenBank of NCBI at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ under the accession number MW015945. The associated BioProject, Bio-Sample and SRA numbers are PRJNA681300, SAMN16948895, SRR13170425-SRR13170439 respectively.
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Associated Data
This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.
Data Availability Statement
The genome sequence data that support the findings of his study are openly available in GenBank of NCBI at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ under the accession number MW015945. The associated BioProject, Bio-Sample and SRA numbers are PRJNA681300, SAMN16948895, SRR13170425-SRR13170439 respectively.