The mitochondrial transcriptome of the anglerfish Lophius piscatorius

Abstract

Objective: Analyze key features of the anglerfish Lophius piscatorius mitochondrial transcriptome based on high-throughput total RNA sequencing. Results: We determined the complete mitochondrial DNA and corresponding transcriptome sequences of L. piscatorius. Key features include highly abundant mitochondrial ribosomal RNAs (10-100 times that of mRNAs), and that cytochrome oxidase mRNAs appeared > 5 times more abundant than both NADH dehydrogenase and ATPase mRNAs. Unusual for a vertebrate mitochondrial mRNA, the polyadenylated COI mRNA was found to harbor a 75 nucleotide 3′ untranslated region. The mitochondrial genome expressed several non-canonical genes, including the long noncoding RNAs lncCR-H, lncCR-L and lncCOI. Whereas lncCR-H and lncCR-L mapped to opposite strands in a non-overlapping organization within the control region, lncCOI appeared novel among vertebrates. We found lncCOI to be a highly abundant mitochondrial RNA in antisense to the COI mRNA. Finally, we present the coding potential of a humanin-like peptide within the large subunit ribosomal RNA.