Complete sequences of mitochondrial genomes from the Baltic mussel Mytilus trossulus

Marine mussels Mytilus possess two mitochondrial (mt) genomes, which undergo doubly uniparental inheritance (DUI). Female (F) and male (M) genomes are usually highly diverged at the sequence level. Both genomes contain the same set of metazoan genes (for 12 proteins, 2 rRNAs and 23 tRNAs), both lack the atp8 gene and have two tRNAs for methionine. However, recently recombination between those variants has been reported. Both original F and M mt genomes of M. trossulus were replaced by M. edulis mtDNA in the Baltic populations. Highly diverged M genome occurs rarely in the Baltic mussels. Full sequences of the M genome identified in males (sperm) and F genome in females (eggs) were obtained. Both genomes were diverged by 24% in nucleotide sequence, but had similar nucleotide composition and codon usage bias. Constant domain (CD) of the control region (CR), the tRNA and rRNA genes were the most conserved. The most diverged was the variable domain 1 (VD1) of the control region. The F genome was longer than M by 147 bp. and the main difference was localised in the VD1 region. No recombination was observed in whole mtDNA of both studied variants. Nuclear mitochondrial pseudogenes (numts) have not been found by hybridisation with probes complementary to several fragments of the Baltic M. trossulus mtDNA.