The structure of the Australian and South American marsupial mitochondrial control region.
OBJECTIVE
The mitochondrial control region (CR) was studied across five marsupialian orders, in order to give a detailed overview of its features.


RESULTS
The CR is organised into three domains similar to the CR of placental mammals. However, the conservation of different features among the marsupial orders is in general more strict. In the first domain, two conserved blocks extended termination-associated sequences (ETAS 1 and ETAS 2) are present in all marsupial orders. In the third domain, the three conserved sequence blocks (CSB 1, CSB 2 and CSB 3) are present and complete, with CSB 1 being duplicated in four of five marsupial orders.


CONCLUSIONS
The nucleotide frequency and secondary structures of the repeats were typical for marsupial species. The repeats are generally AT-rich except in Dasyuridae and Paucituberculata, which show a significant increase in GC content.
Nilsson
Maria A
MA
Institute for Experimental Pathology/ZMBE, University of Münster, Münster, Germany. mnilsson@uni-muenster.de
D000818:Animals; D001315:Australia; D001483:Base Sequence; D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial / Q000737:chemistry*; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D014644:Genetic Variation; D005843:Geography; D008394:Marsupialia / Q000235:genetics*; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D013020:South America
D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial