Dear Evoldir members,
Sorry for the delay to post the answers I got for a
hypervariable mitochondrial region to amplify in Gastropods or any
Mollusca. Unfortunately I didn¡¯t receive good news, apparently gastropod
mt genome doesn't have a HVR or even very many intergenic spaces.
here are some of the main answers I received. Thank you all.

I'm afraid I've got some bad news for you. I've wished many times that
my land snails had a hyper variable region so I could get some better
resolution in the shallow regions of my phylogeny. Sadly it seems the
gastropod mt genome doesn't have a HVR or even very many intergenic
spaces, attached is a review that cites all the whole mt genome sequences
published for molluscs if you want to check it out for yourself.

You may not find enough variation in the mitochondrial DNA.  Many inverts
have slower evolutionary rates for mtDNA nearly equal to their nuclear
genome.  This was the case in some California limpets that I helped a
student with.  You also may be looking at relatively recent divergence
among the populations, as well.

In the group of the pulmonates I've looked for exactly the same as you:
hypervariable loci on the mitochondrion.  Alas, it did not work for me
either. I've also checked CO1 and 16S.  However, SNPs seem to be much
more abundant on CO1 than on 16S, and enzymatic digestion may give lots
of variation.  In addition, in many groups there is this hypervariable
region on the mitochondrion called the d-loop.

Carla

 

Biol. Mar¨ªa Carla de Aranzamendi
Gen¨¦tica de Poblaciones y Evoluci¨®n
Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, F¨ªsicas y Naturales
Universidad Nacional de C¨®rdoba
Argentina
Tel: +54-351-4332090 int. 34

To: juan_jmart@yahoo.com.ar