title: Structural organization of the mitochondrial DNA control region in Aedes aegypti.
abstract: The complete A+T - rich region of Aedes aegypti mitochondrial DNA has been cloned and sequenced. In Argentinean populations of the species, a polymorphism in the length of the amplified fragment was observed. Nucleotide sequence comparison of the shortest and longest A+T - rich amplified fragments detected revealed the presence of 2 types of tandemly repeated blocks. The size variation observed in natural populations is mainly due to the presence of a variable number of a 181 bp tandem repeat unit, located toward the 12S rRNA gene end. The size of the longest A+T - rich region was of 2070 bp, representing the largest control sequence reported for any mosquito species. Few relevant short blocks of primary-sequence similarity conserved in the control region of mosquitoes and other insects were detected scattered throughout the whole region. Five putative stem-loop secondary structures were found, one of them flanked by conserved sequences described in other insects. Our results suggest that there are no universal models of structure-function relations in the control region of insect mtDNA. In addition, we identified a short A+T - rich variable segment in the Ae. aegyti control region that would be suitable for population genetic studies.
authors.affiliation: Cátedra de Genética de Poblaciones y Evolución, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Fisicas y Naturales, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Córdoba, Argentina.
authors.forename: Juan C Rondan
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Dueñas
authors.forename: Cristina N
authors.initials: CN
authors.lastname: Gardenal
authors.forename: Guillermo Albrieu
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Llinás
authors.forename: Graciela M
authors.initials: GM
authors.lastname: Panzetta-Dutari
mesh_terms: D000330:Aedes / Q000235:genetics*; D000818:Animals; D001482:Base Composition; D001483:Base Sequence; D016384:Consensus Sequence; D009033:Culicidae / Q000235:genetics; D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics*; D006239:Haplotypes; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D011110:Polymorphism, Genetic; D012689:Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid; D013045:Species Specificity; D020080:Tandem Repeat Sequences
chemical_list: D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial