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New Mianyang Mitogenome Revealed Length Variation Among Four Sparrowhawk Mitogenomes

Eurasian sparrowhawk perched outdoors
Research · Genetics & genomics

Researchers sequenced a complete mitochondrial genome, or mitogenome, from a Eurasian sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus) from Mianyang, China, and compared it with three previously available regional samples. A mitogenome is the small genome carried by mitochondria, separate from most of the DNA in the cell nucleus. The Mianyang mitogenome was 18,297 base pairs long; the four samples ranged from 18,297 base pairs in Mianyang to 19,417 in Buk-gu.

All four mitogenomes retained the same basic organisation: 37 genes, an A+T-rich control region and a pseudo-control region, an additional control-region-like part of the mitochondrial DNA. The strongest length variation occurred in this pseudo-control region, showing that overall genome length could differ substantially even though the basic gene set was unchanged.

The researchers also found differences in the start and stop codons of some protein-coding genes — the short DNA signals that mark where protein coding begins and ends.

Phylogenetic analyses of mitochondrial gene sequences placed the sampled sparrowhawks together and showed a close relationship with the northern goshawk (Accipiter gentilis) within the analysed dataset.

Sources and image credit

  1. Ma, X., Liu, R., Ao, L., Wang, X., Liao, M., Zhuoma, Y., Wei, Z., & Zhang, M. (2026). Comparative analysis of the mitochondrial genome of Accipiter nisus. Cytology and Genetics, 60(2), 229–234. https://doi.org/10.3103/S0095452726010068

Image: Isiwal — wild Eurasian sparrowhawk photographed in Upper Austria on 31 December 2020; Wikimedia Commons Quality Image. Representative image for this story; not presented as an animal or scene from the reported study or event. · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source

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