鳞翅目昆虫比较线粒体基因组学研究进展

Advances in comparative mitogenomic studies of Lepidoptera(Arthropoda: Insecta)

鳞翅目昆虫,无论作为农林业主要害虫,抑或作为传粉媒介和经济昆虫,对人类社会都产生了深远影响.昆虫线粒体基因组具有基因组成稳定、基因排列相对保守等性质,因而广泛用于进化和系统发育研究.目前已有63种鳞翅目昆虫的线粒体基因组序列被测定,本文比较了其中已知的58条参考序列的基本特征;同时构建了鳞翅目昆虫系统发育树,发现其与传统分类具有较好的一致性.本工作为鳞翅目昆虫的进化研究奠定了基础,并提示线粒体比较基因组学在后基因组时代对于构建昆虫系统发育关系有着巨大潜力.

Lepidopteran insects have a marked impact on human society, whether functioning as major pests of agriculture and forestry, pollinators, or a primary producer of silk. Insect mitochondrial genome （mitogenome） has a relatively conserved gene content and gene order, so it has been widely used in molecular phylogeny and evolution. To date, complete mitogenomes have been sequenced for a total of 63 species of Lepidoptera. Among the sequenced mitogenomes, however, only 58 are reference sequences available in GenBank. Here, a comparative analysis of all the mitogenome reference sequences revealed some basic features of lepidopteran mitogenomes. Furthermore, the phylogenefic relationships within Lepidoptera based on the complete mitogenome sequences proved to be similar to that based on traditional morphological characters. This work paves the way for better understanding of the evolution of lepidopteran insects, and suggests that comparative mitogenomic analysis has great potential for resolving phylogenefic relationships among the major groups of insects at the dawn of the postgenomic era.