Abstract
We present here the complete 16,338 nucleotide DNA sequence of the bovine mitochondrial genome. This sequence is homologous to that of the human mitochondrial genome (Anderson
et al., 1981) and the genes are organized in virtually identical fashion. The bovine mitochondrial protein genes are 63 to 79% homologous to their human counterparts, and most of the nucleotide differences occur in the third positions of codons. The minimum rate of base substitution that accounts for the nucleotide differences in the codon third positions is very high: at least 6 × 10
−9 changes per position per year. The bovine and human mitochondrial transfer RNA genes exhibit more interspecies variation than do their cytoplasmic counterparts, with the “TΨC” loop being the most variable part of the molecule. The bovine 12 S and 16 S ribosomal RNA genes, when compared with those from human mitochondrial DNA, show conserved features that are consistent with proposed secondary structure models for the ribosomal RNAs. Unlike the pattern of moderate-to-high homology between the bovine and human mitochondrial DNAs found over most of the genome, the DNA sequence in the bovine D-loop region is only slightly homologous to the corresponding region in the human mitochondrial genome. This region is also quite variable in length, and accounts for the bulk of the size difference between the human and bovine mitochondrial DNAs.