LE3 .A278 2016

2016

Stewart, Don

Acadia University

Master of Science

Masters

Biology

Biology

In most metazoans paternal mitochondria represent evolutionary ‘dead-ends’. In mussels however, this paradigm does not hold true; both maternal and paternal mitochondria are inherited. In this thesis, maternal and paternal mitochondrial genomes of the marine horse mussel, Modiolus modiolus, are characterized for the first time using Next-Generation sequencing and mitochondrial DNA annotation. The maternal mitochondrial genome is 15.8 kb long, while the paternal mitochondrial genome is ~23.5 kb, a size discrepancy due to the paternal genome housing a variety of repetitive elements, trnT duplications, and an ancient male control region (CR) insertion. Based on phylogenetic analyses, not only is the paternal genome shown to evolve faster than its maternal counter-part, but also the maternal-to-paternal p-distance predicted (38%) is the highest reported for any marine mussel. Using the Male control region as a reference point, two conserved motifs associated with paternal transmission of mitochondrial DNA, CMA and CMB, are also proposed.

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https://scholar.acadiau.ca/islandora/object/theses:412