Comparative analysis of the complete mitochondrial genomes of four cordyceps fungi

• Published in: Ecology and evolution Vol. 12; no. 4; pp. e8818 - n/a
• Main Authors: Zhong, Can, Jin, Jian, Zhou, Rongrong, Liu, Hao, Xie, Jing, Wan, Dan, Xiao, Shengen, Zhang, Shuihan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England John Wiley & Sons, Inc 01.04.2022; John Wiley and Sons Inc; Wiley
• Subjects: Amino acids; Bayesian analysis; Circular DNA; Comparative analysis; cordyceps; Developmental biology; Fungi; Genes; Genetic engineering; Genetics; Genomes; Genomics; Introns; Mitochondria; Mitochondrial DNA; mitochondrial genome; Nucleotides; Ophiocordyceps; phylogenetic analysis; Phylogenetics; Phylogeny; Population differentiation; Population genetics; Population studies; rRNA; Taxonomy; Transfer RNA; tRNA; China; mitochondrial genome; phylogenetic analysis; introns; cordyceps
• ISSN: 2045-7758; 2045-7758
• DOI: 10.1002/ece3.8818

Cordyceps is a large group of entomogenous, medicinally important fungi. In this study, we sequenced, assembled, and annotated the entire mitochondrial genome of Ophiocordyceps xuefengensis, in addition to comparing it against other three complete cordyceps mitogenomes that were previously published. Comparative analysis indicated that the four complete mitogenomes are all composed of circular DNA molecules, although their sizes significantly differ due to high variability in intron and intergenic region sizes in the Ophiocordyceps sinensis and O. xuefengensis mitogenomes. All mitogenomes contain 14 conserved genes and two ribosomal RNA genes, but varying numbers of tRNA introns. The Ka/Ks ratios for all 14 PCGs and rps3 were all less than 1, indicating that these genes have been subject to purifying selection. Phylogenetic analysis was conducted using concatenated amino acid and nucleotide sequences of the 14 PCGs and rps3 using two different methods (Maximum Likelihood and Bayesian analysis), revealing highly supported relationships between O. xuefengensis and other Ophiocordyceps species, in addition to a close relationship with O. sinensis. Further, the analyses indicated that cox1 and rps3 play important roles in population differentiation. These mitogenomes will allow further study of the population genetics, taxonomy, and evolutionary biology of medicinally important cordyceps species. Ophiocordyceps xuefengensis is a newly identified cordyceps resource that we previously discovered on Xuefeng mountain in the Hunan province of China. The novel taxa have been widely used as an ethnopharmacological invigorant by the Yao group for a long time. And further molecular phylogenetic and species identification studies are critically needed.