Complete mitochondrial genome of Indian tent turtle, Pangshura tentoria and comparative mitochondriomics

Complete mitochondrial genomes of Indian tent turtle, Pangshura tentoria was sequenced and annotated as 16,657 bp in length. This first assembly was encoded by 37 genes: 13 protein coding genes (PCGs), 22 transfer RNA (tRNAs), two ribosomal RNA (rRNAs) as similar to the typical vertebrate mitochondrial gene arrangement. The complete mitogenome has a base composition of A (33.30%), G (13.54%), C (27%), and T (26.13%). Most of the genes were encoded on major strand, except for the eight tRNAs and one PCG ( nad6 ). Almost all PCGs were starting with an ATG initiation codon, except for cytochrome oxidase subunit 1 ( cox1 ) with ‘GTG’ and NADH dehydrogenase subunit 5 ( nad5 ) with ‘ATA’. The typical termination codons, ‘TAA’ and ‘AGA’ has been observed in NADH dehydrogenase subunit 4l ( nad4l ) and NADH dehydrogenase subunit 6 ( nad6 ) respectively; and others were used incomplete stop codons. The Relative Synonymous Codon Usage (RSCU) analysis revealed the maximum abundance of Alanine, Isoleucine, Leucine, and Threonine in P. tentoria . Codon distribution per thousand codon (CDsPT) values for all the amino acids showed the maximum values were present for Leucine in all geoemydid turtles. Further, the PCGs showed non-synonymous (Ka)/synonymous (Ks) values were <1 that indicated a strong negative selection among the studied species. The tRNAs were folded into classic clover-leaf secondary structures, except for trnS (GCT), lacking of the conventional DHU arm or stem. Further, the 10 tRNAs showed G-T mismatches and forming weak bonds. In the control region (CR) of P. tentoria , a single tandem repeat of eight base pairs (TTCTCTTT) was resulted with two copy numbers. The comparative study of CR with other geoemydid turtles revealed the numbers of tandem repeats were frequent in the 3´ end and structural characteristic were species-specific. The Maximum Likelihood (ML) phylogeny showed 32 geoemydid turtles were clustered distinctly with high bootstrap support and congruent with the previous phylogenetic hypothesis. Further, the representative mitogenome sequences of other family/suborder were depicted discrete clades in the ML tree. The study argued the complete mitochondrial genome sequence of P. tentoria and comparative mitochondriomics of geoemydid turtles would be useful for further phylogenetic reconciliation and evolutionary research.