Structural Variation of the Turtle Mitochondrial Control Region

The present study describes the most comprehensive comparison of turtle mtD-loop regions to date. The primary structure was compared from DNA sequences accessed from GenBank from 48 species in 13 families of extant turtles, and secondary structures of the mtD-loop region were inferred from thermal stabilities, using the program Mfold, for each superfamiliy of turtles. Both primary and secondary structures were found to be highly variable across the order. The Cryptodira showed conservation in the primary structure at conserved sequence blocks (CSBs), but the Pleurodira displayed limited conservation of primary structural characters, other than the coreTAS, a binding site for the helicase TWINKLE, which was highly conserved in the Central and Right Domains across the order. No secondary structure was associated with a TAS, but an AT-rich fold (secondary structure) near the 3' terminus of the mtD-loop region was detected in all turtle superfamilies. Mapping of character states of structural features of the mtD-loop region revealed that most character states were autapomorphies and inferred a number of homoplasies. The Left Domain of turtles, containing no highly conserved structural elements, likely does not serve a functional role; therefore, the Central Domain in turtles is likely equivalent to the Left Domain of mammals. The AT-rich secondary structural element near the 3' terminus of the mtD-loop region may be conserved across turtles because of a functional role, perhaps containing the Light Strand Promotor, or perhaps interacting with the TWINKLE-coreTAS complex in the Central and Right Domains to regulate mtDNA replication and transcription.