Complete mitochondrial genome of the largest living fish: whale shark Rhincodon typus (Orectolobiformes: Rhincodontidae)

Abstract

The whale shark Rhincodon typus (Pisces: Chondrichthyes, Orectolobiformes, Rhincodontidae) is the largest living fish on Earth. In this study, we presented its complete mitogenome. It is 16,928 bp in length, contains 13 protein-coding genes, 2 rRNA genes, 22 tRNA genes and one control region with the typical gene order and transcriptional direction in the vertebrates. Overall base composition of the R. typus mitogenome is 33.5% A, 24.3% C, 12.8% G and 29.5% T. Two start codon (GTG and ATG) and two stop codon patterns (TAG and TAA/T) were found in protein-coding genes. The tRNA-Ser2 could not be folded into the typical cloverleaf secondary structure because of the replacement of its dihydrouridine arm by a simple loop. A termination associated sequences (TAS) and three conserved sequence blocks (CSB1-3) were identified in the control region.

iDNA at Sea: Recovery of Whale Shark (Rhincodon typus) Mitochondrial DNA Sequences from the Whale Shark Copepod (Pandarus rhincodonicus) Confirms Global Population Structure

“…Although not the first for the species (Alam et al, 2014;Chen et al, 2016), the sequences generated by our study represent the first for the Mozambique population of whale sharks. The successful recovery of the mitogenome and nuclear ribosomal RNA from the shotgun sequencing of P. rhincodonicus was probably due to the high copy number of mitochondrial and nuclear ribosomal genes in somatic cells, coupled with high sequencing depth (∼14 million paired-end reads).…”

The genetic relationships and Indo-Pacific connectivity of whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) with particular reference to mitochondrial COI gene sequences from Cendrawasih Bay, Papua, Indonesia

“…The variation in the length of the gene fragment is mainly due to PCR primer differences and PCR amplicon concentrations. The mitochondrial DNA of whale sharks consists of a double-stranded ring structure consisting of 16,875 bp according to Alam et al (2014) or 16,928 pb according to Chen et al (2014). The COI whale gene gene is one of the genes in this mitochondrial genome, within a gene fragment 1556 pb, in length, between nucleotides No.…”