Comparative mitogenomes reveal diverse and novel gene rearrangements in the genus Meteorus (Hymenoptera: Braconidae)

Xiaohan Shu; Ruizhong Yuan; Zhilin Xia; Gui Gao; Lei Yang; Zhirong Sun; Qing Mu; Pu Tang; Xuexin Chen

doi:10.3389/fgene.2023.1132606

Comparative mitogenomes reveal diverse and novel gene rearrangements in the genus Meteorus (Hymenoptera: Braconidae)

Front Genet. 2023 Feb 13:14:1132606. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2023.1132606. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Xiaohan Shu^{1

2

3

4}, Ruizhong Yuan^{2

3

4}, Zhilin Xia⁵, Gui Gao⁵, Lei Yang^{5

6}, Zhirong Sun⁵, Qing Mu⁵, Pu Tang^{1

2

3

4}, Xuexin Chen^{1

2

3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Hainan Institute, Zhejiang University, Sanya, China.
² Guangdong Laboratory for Lingnan Modern Agriculture, Guangzhou, China.
³ State Key Lab of Rice Biology, Ministry of Agriculture Key Lab of Molecular Biology of Crop Pathogens and Insects, and Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Biology of Crop Pathogens and Insects, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
⁴ Institute of Insect Sciences, College of Agriculture and Biotechnology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
⁵ Guizhou Province Tobacco Companies Qian xinan Municipal Tobacco Company, Xingyi, China.
⁶ Tobacco Leaf Purchase Center, Hunan China Tobacco Industry Co., Ltd., Changsha, China.

Abstract

Meteorus Haliday, 1835 is a cosmopolitan genus within Braconidae (Hymenoptera). They are koinobiont endoparasitoids of Coleoptera or Lepidoptera larvae. Only one mitogenome of this genus was available. Here, we sequenced and annotated three mitogenomes of Meteorus species, and found that the tRNA gene rearrangements in these mitogenomes were rich and diverse. Compared with the ancestral organization, only seven tRNAs (trnW, trnY, trnL2, trnH, trnT, trnP and trnV) were conserved and trnG had its own unique location in the four mitogenomes. This dramatic tRNA rearrangement was not observed in mitogenomes of other insect groups before. In addition, the tRNA cluster (trnA-trnR-trnN-trnS1-trnE-trnF) between nad3 and nad5 was rearranged into two patterns, i.e., trnE-trnA-trnR-trnN-trnS1 and trnA-trnR-trnS1-trnE-trnF-trnN. The phylogenetic results showed that the Meteorus species formed a clade within the subfamily Euphorinae, and were close to Zele (Hymenoptera, Braconidae, Euphorinae). In the Meteorus, two clades were reconstructed: M. sp. USNM and Meteorus pulchricornis forming one clade while the remaining two species forming another clade. This phylogenetic relationship also matched the tRNA rearrangement patterns. The diverse and phylogenetic signal of tRNA rearrangements within one genus provided insights into tRNA rearrangements of the mitochondrial genome at genus/species levels in insects.

Keywords: Braconidae; Meteorus; gene rearrangement; mitochondrial genome; tRNA gene.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the Guangdong Laboratory of Lingnan Modern Agriculture Project (NT2021003), the Guizhou Tobacco Company of China National Tobacco Corporation (Science and Technology Major Project, No. 2022XM09), the Key International Joint Research Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (31920103005), the General Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (32070467), the Key R&D Program of Zhejiang Province (2020C02003), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2021FZZX001-31). The funder was not involved in the study design, collection, analysis, interpretation of data, the writing of this article or the decision to submit it for publication.