Mitochondrial genome sequencing of a vermivorous cone snail Conus quercinus supports the correlative analysis between phylogenetic relationships and dietary types of Conus species

PLoS One. 2018 Jul 30;13(7):e0193053. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0193053. eCollection 2018.

Abstract

Complete mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) sequence of a worm-hunting cone snail, Conus quercinus, was reported in this study. Its mitogenome, the longest one (16,460 bp) among reported Conus specie, is composed of 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 22 transfer RNA (tRNA) genes, two ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes and one D-loop region. The mitochondrial gene arrangement is highly-conserved and identical to other reported. However, the D-loop region of C. quercinus is the longest (943 bp) with the higher A+T content (71.3%) and a long AT tandem repeat stretch (68 bp). Subsequent phylogenetic analysis demonstrated that three different dietary types (vermivorous, molluscivorous and piscivorous) of cone snails are clustered separately, suggesting that the phylogenetics of cone snails is related to their dietary types. In conclusion, our current work improves our understanding of the mitogenomic structure and evolutionary status of the vermivorous C. quercinus, which support the putative hypothesis that the Conus ancestor was vermivorous.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Annelida
  • Base Composition
  • Base Sequence
  • Biological Evolution
  • Chromosome Mapping
  • Conotoxins / genetics*
  • Conus Snail / classification
  • Conus Snail / genetics*
  • Food Chain
  • Gene Ontology
  • Genome Size
  • Genome, Mitochondrial*
  • Mitochondria / genetics*
  • Molecular Sequence Annotation
  • Open Reading Frames
  • Phylogeny
  • RNA, Ribosomal / genetics*
  • RNA, Transfer / genetics*
  • Sequence Alignment
  • Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid
  • Tandem Repeat Sequences

Substances

  • Conotoxins
  • RNA, Ribosomal
  • RNA, Transfer

Grants and funding

This work was supported by Natural Science Foundation of Hainan Province (No. 317170), Shenzhen Dapeng Special Project for Industrial Development (No. PT20170302), and National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81560611). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.