Complete mitochondrial genome of the Olympia oyster Ostrea lurida (Bivalvia, Ostreidae).

The complete mitochondrial (mt) genome of the Olympia oyster Ostrea lurida (16,344 bp), an economically important bivalve, was newly sequenced and annotated. Ostrea lurida is the largest reported Ostrea oyster mt genomes to date and has a comparatively highest overall A + T content (65%) among the available genomes of marine oysters. High levels of variability of nad2 and nad6 genes and that of major non-coding region (MNR) indicate their potential value as useful molecular markers for population and conservation genetic studies in the future. Phylogenetic analyses based on concatenated nucleotide sequences from all 13 PCGs and 2 rRNA genes show that the European flat oyster Ostrea edulis is sister to the Asian slipper oyster Ostrea denselamellosa, while O. lurida is put at the most basal position of the clade, and indicate that Ostrea are closer to Saccostrea than Crassostrea, although gene arrangement shows a closer relationship between Ostrea and Crassostrea. The observations of the evolutionary pattern of start codon usage among the three congeneric oysters indicate that variation in start codon usage is species-correlated rather than gene-correlated, and to some extent, bears useful phylogenetic information.