BMC Genomics BioMed Central Research article Open Access The complete mitochondrial genome of the common sea slater, Ligia oceanica (Crustacea, Isopoda) bears a novel gene order and unusual control region features Fabian Kilpert and Lars Podsiadlowski* Address: Department of Animal Systematics and Evolution, Institute of Biology, Freie Universität Berlin, Konigin-Luise-Str. 1-3, D-14195 Berlin, Germany Email: Fabian Kilpert -
[email protected]; Lars Podsiadlowski* -
[email protected] * Corresponding author Published: 20 September 2006 Received: 16 June 2006 Accepted: 20 September 2006 BMC Genomics 2006, 7:241 doi:10.1186/1471-2164-7-241 This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/7/241 © 2006 Kilpert and Podsiadlowski; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: Sequence data and other characters from mitochondrial genomes (gene translocations, secondary structure of RNA molecules) are useful in phylogenetic studies among metazoan animals from population to phylum level. Moreover, the comparison of complete mitochondrial sequences gives valuable information about the evolution of small genomes, e.g. about different mechanisms of gene translocation, gene duplication and gene loss, or concerning nucleotide frequency biases. The Peracarida (gammarids, isopods, etc.) comprise about 21,000 species of crustaceans, living in many environments from deep sea floor to arid terrestrial habitats. Ligia oceanica is a terrestrial isopod living at rocky seashores of the european North Sea and Atlantic coastlines.