Zoological Studies

Comparative Analysis of the Mitochondrial Control Region in Orthoptera

Ling Zhao, Zhe-Min Zheng, Yuan Huang, Zhijun Zhou, and Li Wang (2011) The entire sequence of the mitochondrial (mt)DNA control region (CR) in 3 new grasshopper species, Euchorthippus fusigeniculatus, Mekongiana xiangchengensis and Mekongiella xizangensis, consisting of 875, 733 and 1063 bp, respectively, were determined and subjected to a comparative analysis with the mtDNA CRs of 25 other orthoptera species obtained from GenBank. In this study, we stressed the comparative analysis of the stem-loop secondary structure in the A+T-rich region of all orthoptera species available to date, and it showed that the stem-loop secondary structure can be classed into 3 different types. Furthermore, we also reported new findings which may facilitate further investigations of this secondary structure and a better understanding of it. Finally, using these sequences of the secondary structure, we reconstructed a phylogeny of the Caelifera as a vehicle to examine the phylogenetic usefulness of stem-loop secondary structure data in resolving relationships within the suborder. Our results showed that the short sequences of the stem-loop secondary structure provided good resolution at the intra-subfamily level within the Caelifera, whereas it poorly resolved family- and subfamily-level relationships.