Highly conserved gene arrangement of the mitochondrial genomes of 23 Plasmodium species

Malaria's Many Mates: Past, Present, and Future of the Systematics of the Order Haemosporida

“…One of the popular strategies has been to analyze full mitochondrial genomes, perhaps because it is possible to amplify these extremely small genomes in a single amplicon, and because they are quite conserved Roy and Irimia, 2008;Hikosaka et al, 2011). Martinsen et al (2008) was a large multilocus analysis of the order that added 3 additional loci to the original samples of Perkins and Schall (2002), spanning all 3 of the genomes of the parasites and increasing the sampling of the avian parasite taxa.…”

“…In fact, these data sets were the example used in a classic paper demonstrating the critical importance of sequence alignment, more so than even the choice of optimization criterion, on phylogenetic reconstruction (Morrison and Ellis, 1997). Unlike ingroup analyses that relied heavily on mitochondrial sequence data, broader phylogenetic analyses of Apicomplexa have not used these markers, likely because the structure and arrangement of the mitochondrial genomes vary across the group and sometimes even within genera (Hikosaka et al, 2010). Because of the medical and veterinary importance of many apicomplexans, as of 2012, complete genomes have been sequenced for 18 other species belonging to 8 genera.…”

Translation in Mitochondria and Apicoplasts of Apicomplexan Parasites

“…Moreover, rRNAs encoded by the mitochondrial genome are highly fragmented and range in size from 23 to 190 nt, but potentially form secondary structures similar to those proposed for continuous rRNAs (Feagin et al 1997;Feagin et al 2012). A total of 27 rRNA sequences that would comprise fragmented SSU and LSU rRNA (12 SSU rRNAs and 15 LSU rRNAs) have been identified in Plasmodium mitochondria (Feagin et al 1997;Hikosaka et al 2011). Only six fragmented LSU rRNA sequences have been identified in Babesia and Theileria mt genomes and the pattern of fragmentation differs from that predicted in Plasmodium (Hikosaka et al 2010).…”

Mitochondrial population genomic analyses reveal population structure and demography of Indian Plasmodium falciparum

“…To this respect, the mitochondrial (mt) genome sequences are traditionally used for inferences of evolutionary histories of closely related species and also of species populations mainly due to (a) maternal inheritance, (b) lack of recombination, (c) evolution following molecular clock hypothesis and (d) putative neutrality (Avise et al, 1987;Castro et al, 1998;Lynch and Jarrell, 1993). In malaria parasites, the mt genomes have been widely used for understanding genetic interrelationships among different species of Plasmodium infecting an array of organisms (Hikosaka et al, 2011) and also inference on the probable host-switch events (Duval et al, 2010;Krief et al, 2010;Prugnolle et al, 2011). In the two most widely prevalent human malaria parasites Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax, mt genome sequence diversities in populations have been widely studied.…”