New mitogenomes of Runcinidae and Facelinidae: two understudied heterobranch families (Mollusca: Gastropoda)

Carles Galià-Camps; Ana Karla Araujo; Leila Carmona; María Del Rosario Martín-Hervás; Marta Pola; Ferran Palero; Juan Lucas Cervera

doi:10.1080/23802359.2024.2363365

New mitogenomes of Runcinidae and Facelinidae: two understudied heterobranch families (Mollusca: Gastropoda)

Mitochondrial DNA B Resour. 2024 Jun 20;9(6):771-776. doi: 10.1080/23802359.2024.2363365. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Carles Galià-Camps^{1

2}, Ana Karla Araujo^{3

4}, Leila Carmona^{3

4}, María Del Rosario Martín-Hervás^{3

4}, Marta Pola^{5

6}, Ferran Palero^{7

8}, Juan Lucas Cervera^{3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Departament de Genètica, Microbiologia i Estadística, Universitat de Barcelona (UB), Barcelona, Spain.
² Institut de Recerca de la Biodiversitat (IRBio), Universitat de Barcelona (UB), Barcelona, Spain.
³ Departamento de Biología, Facultad de Ciencias del Mar y Ambientales, Campus de Excelencia Internacional del Mar (CEIMAR), Universidad de Cádiz, Puerto Real, Spain.
⁴ Instituto Universitario de Investigación Marina (INMAR), Universidad de Cádiz, Puerto Real, Spain.
⁵ Departamento de Biología, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, CSIC, Madrid, Spain.
⁶ Centro de Investigación en Biodiversidad y Cambio Global (CIBC-UAM), CSIC, Madrid, Spain.
⁷ Cavanilles Institute of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology, University of Valencia, Paterna, Spain.
⁸ Department of Life Sciences, The Natural History Museum, London, UK.

Abstract

Here, we present the mitochondrial sequences of two sea slugs (Heterobranchia): Runcina aurata and Facelina auriculata, the latter being the type species of the family. The mitochondrial genomes are 14,282 and 14,171bp in length, respectively, with a complete set of 13 PCGs, 2 rRNAs, and 22 tRNAs. None of the mitogenomes show gene reorganization, keeping the standard mitogenomic structure of Heterobranchia. Nucleotide composition differs significantly between them, with R. aurata showing the most AT-rich mitogenome (25.7% GC content) reported to date in Heterobranchia, and F. auriculata showing a rich GC content (35%) compared with other heterobranch mitochondrial genomes.

Keywords: GC content; Mitochondrial genome; neglected taxa; phylogenomics; specific primer design; systematics; type taxon.

Grants and funding

This study was supported by the Fundación Biodiversidad of the Spanish Ministry for the Ecological Transition, [Project BIOCALETA], Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, and by ERDF ‘A way of making Europe’ with a predoctoral grant [PRE-2018-085227 – MCIN/AEI/10.13039501100011033] given to CG, the University of Cadiz [PR2018-039], the Andalusian Plan of Research, Development, and Innovation (PAIDI), from the Andalusian Autonomic Government [RNM-213], the Generalitat de Catalunya‐AGAUR [SGR2017-1120], and the Conselleria d‘Innovació, Universitats, Ciència i Societat Digital. FP acknowledges the project CIDEGENT/2019/028 – BIOdiversity PAtterns of Crustacea from Karstic.