Characterization of the complete mitochondrial genome of the fluke of turdus, Plagiorchis elegans, and phylogenetic implications

Plagiorchis (Lühe 1899) is described as the largest genus in the family Plagiorchiidae (Lühe 1901), with over 140 formally described species (Greani et al., 2014). Those parasites inhabit the intestines of vertebrates, which are the definitive hosts of Plagiorchis spp., including humans, and may be responsible for the occurrence of inflammation and hemorrhages in infected animals (Biserkov and Kostadinova, 1998; Ito and Itagaki, 2003; Janssen and Bock, 1990; Tkach et al., 2000). Pathological lesions of infected definitive-hosts are mainly present in the intestine and bile duct (Boyce et al., 2014; Guk et al., 2007), which is similar to the chronic nature and lesions caused by Opistorchis spp. and Clonorchis sinensis infecting in mammals (Sripa et al., 2010). In the past decades, infections by the genus Plagiorchis in humans have been reported several times in Asia areas (Guk et al., 2007; Hong et al., 1996; Liu, 2012).

The systematic and phylogenetic relationship of taxa of suborder Xiphidiata are uncertain, which comprises four superfamilies, Gorgoderoidea, Allocreadioidea, Plagiorchioidea, and Microphalloidea. Previous results showed Plagiorchioidea and Microphalloidea were sister taxa, and family Plagiorchiidae was the main taxon within Plagiorchioidea (Olson et al., 2003). Plagiorchioidea is paraphyletic with an extremely morphological diversity of its taxa, and the systematic position and evolutionary relationship of it remain highly problematic and controversial, despite extensive work have been done on systematics and biology (Tkach et al., 2000, 2008). Despite the systematic and phylogenetic importance of the superfamily Plagiorchioidea, it is still limited taxonomic information due to poor morphological descriptions and low host specificity (Ndiaye et al., 2013; Zikmundová et al., 2014). P. elegans (Rudolphi, 1802) is a widely distributed species of the genus Plagiorchis, which is the member genus of the Plagiorchiidae (Greani et al., 2014). However, the biology and phylogeny of it are still poorly available (Faltýnková et al., 2016; Zbikowska, 2007; Zbikowska et al., 2006).

To better understand the taxonomic position, evolutionary relationship, and phylogeny of the family Plagiorchiidae and genus Plagiorchis, it is necessary to acquire more complete mitochondrial (mt) genomes (mitogenome) to support and verify existed taxonomy within the superfamily Plagiorchioidea. Herein, the objectives of the present study are to obtain and annotate a complete mt sequence of P. elegans, and to analyze the phylogenetic relationship within the suborder Xiphidiata using concatenated mt amino acid alignment dataset.

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