The longest mitochondrial protein in metazoans is encoded by the male-transmitted mitogenome of the bivalve Scrobicularia plana.

ABSTRACT: Cytochrome c oxidase subunit II (COX2) is one of the three mitochondrially encoded proteins of the complex IV of the respiratory chain that catalyses the reduction of oxygen to water. The cox2 gene spans about 690 base pairs in most animal species and produces a protein composed of approximately 230 amino acids. We discovered an extreme departure from this pattern in the male-transmitted mitogenome of the bivalve Scrobicularia plana with doubly uniparental inheritance (DUI) of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which possesses an important in-frame insertion of approximately 4.8 kb in its cox2 gene. This feature-an enlarged male cox2 gene-is found in many species with DUI; the COX2 protein can be up to 420 amino acids long. Through RT-PCRs, immunoassays and comparative

SUBMITTER: Tasse M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9174706 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature