Search

The sandbar shark, Carcharhinus plumbeus, a major representative species in shark fisheries worldwide is now considered vulnerable to overfishing. A pool of 774,234 Roche 454 shotgun sequences from one individual were assembled into a 16,706 bp mitogenome with 33× average coverage depth. It comprised 13 protein coding genes, 22 transfer RNA's, 2 ribosomal genes and 2 non-coding regions, typical of a vertebrate mitogenome. As expected for sharks, an A-T nucleotide bias was evident. This adds to rapidly growing number of mitogenome assemblies for the economically important Carcharhinidae family. The C. plumbeus mitogenome will assist researchers, fisheries and conservation managers interested in shark molecular systematics, phylogeography, conservation genetics, population and stock structure.

The dusky shark Carcharhinus obscurus is economically important but vulnerable to overharvesting. The complete C. obscurus mitogenome was assembled from approximately 1 million whole genome shotgun sequences using a combination of reference mapping and de novo assembly (mean coverage 59x). This resulted in a 16,706 bp double-stranded circular mitochondrial sequence. Following the consensus vertebrate mtDNA genome, it comprises 13 protein-coding genes, 22 transfer RNAs, two ribosomal RNAs and has 2 non-coding areas. The A + T (56.9%) versus G + C (43.1%) composition confirmed an A + T bias previously noted for sharks. This genome is the first for the speciose Carcharhinus genus and provides a valuable resource for studies of shark molecular systematics, phylogeography, conservation genetics, and stock structure.