Comparative analysis of mt LSU rRNA secondary structures of Odonates: structural variability and phylogenetic signal

Abstract

Secondary structures of the most conserved part of the mt 16S rRNA gene, domains IV and V, have been recently analysed in a comparative study. However, full secondary structures of the mt LSU rRNA molecule are published for only a few insect species. The present study presents full secondary structures of domains I, II, IV and V of Odonates and one representative of mayflies, Ephemera sp. The reconstructions are based on a comparative approach and minimal consensus structures derived from sequence alignments. The inferred structures exhibit remarkable similarities to the published Drosophila melanogaster model, which increases confidence in these structures. Structural variance within Odonates is homoplastic, and neighbour-joining trees based on tree edit distances do not correspond to any of the phylogenetically expected patterns. However, despite homoplastic quantitative structural variation, many similarities between Odonates and Ephemera sp. suggest promising character sets for higher order insect systematics that merit further investigations.