Comparative Analysis of a Mitochondrial DNA Control Region Fragment Amplified from Three Adriatic Flatfish Species and Molecular Phylogenesis of Pleuronectiformes

Abstract

: The 5'-end of the mitochondrial control region of three Pleuronectiformes from the Adriatic Sea, Platichthys flesus italicus (Adriatic flounder), Solea vulgaris (common sole), and Solea kleini (Klein's sole), was sequenced and compared with that of six other flatfish species from the families Pleuronectidae and Bothidae. The sequence structures of all flatfishes appear very similar and consist of alternate short segments with low, medium, and high rates of nucleotide substitution. Four conserved 19-bp repeats occur at the beginning of the European and Adriatic flounder sequences. The common occurrence of tandem arrays in fish control regions could be related to a stable secondary structure. Molecular phylogenetic relationships among Pleuronectiformes agree well with previous morphologic data at all taxonomic levels. Molecular analyses could therefore contribute to resolving phylogenetic and taxonomic debates within the Pleuronectiformes.

Phylogenetic analysis of flatfish (Order Pleuronectiformes) based on mitochondrial 16s rDNA sequences

“…Paralichthyidae appeared divided into two groups, one group was constituted by the genera Paralichthys and Pseudorhombus (Paralichthyidae II), which were soundly related to the members of the family Pleuronectidae which were analyzed. A relationship between species of Pleuronectidae and several paralichthyid genera had been previously suggested by Tinti et al (1999), and Berendzen and Dimmick (2002), following the analysis of mtDNA sequences. On the other hand, the remaining genera, Citharichthys, Etropus and Syacium (Paralichthyidae I), which belong to the monophyletic group Cyclopsetta Chapleau, 1993), appeared related to the members of the families Bothidae and Achiridae analyzed in the present study.…”

“…The position of Pleuronectiformes in relation to other major fish groups and the phylogenetic relationships within the order are still problematic. Most studies have been carried out based on morpho-anatomical characters (Hubbs, 1945;Lauder and Liem, 1983;Ahlstrom et al, 1984;Hensley and Ahlstrom, 1984;Chapleau, 1993), and only a few molecular phylogenetic analyses have been performed to date on this order (Vernau et al, 1994;Tinti et al, 1999;Berendzen and Dimmick, 2002).…”

“…In the work by Vernau et al (1994), based on protein electrophoresis and DNA/DNA hybridization, the family Soleidae appeared, in accordance with Hubbs (1945), as the most primitive within the Pleuronectiformes, while others point to this family together with Cynoglossidae as the most specialized families of the group (Chapleau, 1993). More recent sequence analyses (Tinti et al, 1999;Exadactylos and Thorpe, 2001), were limited both in the number of species and families, and mainly devoted to solve intrafamily relationships. The recent report by Berendzen and Dimmick (2002), represents the most complete study on flatfish phylogeny to date based on mtDNA sequences, and although most families of the order were included in their work, the number and origin of species within families were not always representative.…”

“…We have also taken data from the GenBank, both to obtain a better representation of some families as well as to get some insight into genetic differentiation between putative assemblages within some species of the group. For this analysis we have chosen the mtDNA 16S rRNA gene due to its effectiveness in previous studies for establishing the evolutionary relationships of lineages of similar divergence in fish (Alves-Gómes et al, 1995;Farias et al, 1999;Tinti et al, 1999;Tringali et al, 1999;Hanel and Sturmbauer, 2000), and also because it is technically easy to obtain sequence information by selective gene amplification with universal primers (Brown, 1985).…”

Complete mitochondrial genome sequences of three rhombosoleid fishes and comparative analyses with other flatfishes (Pleuronectiformes)

“…To date, several genes of mtDNA have been used as molecular markers in the establishment of phylogenetic relationships among flatfishes, such as rRNA genes (Azevedo et al 2008), the cytochrome b gene (Borsa and Quignard 2001), the control region (Tinti et al 1999), and their combinations (Infante et al 2004). Nevertheless, it has been shown that the use of limited sequence data and markers with different evolving rates may cause errors in inferences of the evolutionary relationships among taxa.…”