Complete mitochondrial genome of yellow meal worm (Tenebrio molitor)

The yellow meal worm (Tenebrio molitor L.) is an important resource insect typically used as animal feed additive. It is also widely used for biological research. The first complete mitochondrial genome of T. molitor was determined for the first time by long PCR and conserved primer walking approaches. The results showed that the entire mitogenome of T. molitor was 15 785 bp long, with 72.35% A+T content [deposited in GenBank with accession number KF418153]. The gene order and orientation were the same as the most common type suggested as ancestral for insects. Two protein-coding genes used atypical start codons (CTA in ND2 and AAT in COX1), and the remaining 11 protein-coding genes started with a typical insect initiation codon ATN. All tRNAs showed standard clover-leaf structure, except for tRNA(Ser) (AGN), which lacked a dihydrouridine (DHU) arm. The newly added T. molitor mitogenome could provide information for future studies on yellow meal worm.