The complete mitochondrial genome of Heliconius pachinus has been reconstructed from the whole-genome Illumina sequencing data. The circular genome is 15,369 bp in length, and comprises the typical components: 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 22 transfer RNAs (tRNAs), 2 ribosomal RNAs (rRNAs) and 1 D-loop region. PCGs are mostly initiated with either the ATN codons (COII, COIII, Cytb, ND2, ND3, ND4, ND4L, ND5, ND6, ATP6 & ATP8) or the TTG codon (ND1); the COI gene may use the unusual CGA as its initiation codon, as suggested for other lepidopteran species. Some PCGs harbor TAG (ND3) or incomplete termination codon T (COI, COII & ND4), while the others use TAA as their termination codons. The nucleotide composition is highly asymmetric (39.2% A, 42.0% T, 7.7% G, 11.1% C) with an overall GC content of 18.8%.
Keywords: Butterfly; cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI); initiation codon; mitogenome; next-generation sequencing.