Draft mitochondrial genomes of Hirudo medicinalis and Hirudo verbana (Annelida, Hirudinea)

Anastasia Nikitina; Vladislav Babenko; Tatyana Akopian; Dmitriy Shirokov; Valentin Manuvera; Alexey Kurdyumov; Elena Kostryukova; Vassili Lazarev

doi:10.1080/23802359.2016.1157774

Draft mitochondrial genomes of Hirudo medicinalis and Hirudo verbana (Annelida, Hirudinea)

Mitochondrial DNA B Resour. 2016 Mar 28;1(1):254-256. doi: 10.1080/23802359.2016.1157774.

Authors

Anastasia Nikitina^{1

2}, Vladislav Babenko¹, Tatyana Akopian¹, Dmitriy Shirokov¹, Valentin Manuvera^{1

2}, Alexey Kurdyumov¹, Elena Kostryukova^{1

2}, Vassili Lazarev^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Federal Research and Clinical Center of Physical-Chemical Medicine of Federal Medical Biological Agency, Moscow, Russian Federation.
² Department of Biological and Medical Physics, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Dolgoprudnyi, Russian Federation.

Abstract

Here we present two incomplete mitochondrial genome sequences of Hirudo medicinalis and Hirudo verbana (Annelida, Hirudinea). The corresponding sequences are 14,729 and 14,604 base pairs in length. They contain all mitochondrial genes (13 protein-coding genes, 22 tRNAs and two rRNAs) but lack the non-coding region. Nevertheless, the robust reconstruction of their phylogenetic relationships presented here reveals distinct separation of both leeches from other annelids and at the same time relatively high dissimilarity between each other.

Keywords: Hirudo medicinalis; Hirudo verbana; mitochondrial genome.