Rineloricaria

The Rineloricaria is a genus of Loricariidae with about 65 valid species distributed in the Central America and South America, making them the most diverse genus of this family. They are known as whiptail catfish because of the filament that grows out in caudal fin, it is typical from this genus.

They are characterized by a narrow body, dorsal and ventral rays produced in a filament, abdomen completely covered with platelets and have sexual dimorphism; males have hypertrophied odontodes on the top of head to the predorsal area, on the cheeks and the pectoral-fin rays.

So, this is one more genus we have the transcriptome sequenced and will be used to help us to study the molecular diversity of this large and biodiversity family.

Ancistrus

Ancistrus is a genus of freshwater from the family Loricariidae native to the Neotropical region. This fish has a body covered in bony plates and a ventral suckermouth, as a good Loricariidae. There is a peculiar characteristic associated with this genus: the tentacles located on the head in adult males; females may possess tentacles along the snout margin but they are smaller and they don't have tentacles on the head. They basically feed of phytoplankton and zooplankton, as most of catfishes; and have a special capacity of absorb oxygen from their modified stomach, which allow them to survive in low oxygen conditions.

Now, you known one more cute Loricariidae that is being used in this project to study the molecular biodiversity of this huge family.

First accepted and published manuscript

This is the first peer-reviewed manuscript from this project. It is entitled: "The use of transcriptomic next-generation sequencing data to assembly mitochondrial genomes of Ancistrus spp. (Loricariidae)". 

The full text can be accessed here: goo.gl/yxFpEZ

It was produced with great effort and love. Hope you enjoy.

ABSTRACT

Mitochondrial genes and genomes have long been applied in phylogenetics. Current protocols to sequence mitochondrial genomes rely almost exclusively on long range PCR or on the direct sequencing. While long range PCR includes unnecessary biases, the purification of mtDNA for direct sequencing is not straightforward. We used total RNA extracted from liver and Illumina HiSeq technology to sequence mitochondrial transcripts from three fish (Ancistrus spp.) and assemble their mitogenomes. Based on the mtDNA sequence of a close related species, we estimate to have sequenced 92%, 95% and 99% of the mitogenomes. Taken the sequences together, we sequenced all the 13 proteincoding genes, two ribosomal RNAs, 22 tRNAs and the D-loop known in vertebrate mitogenomes. The use of transcriptomic data allowed the observation of the punctuation pattern of mtRNA maturation, to analyze the transcriptional profile, and to detect heteroplasmic sites. The assembly of mtDNA from transcriptomic data is complementary to other approaches and overcomes some limitations of traditional strategies for sequencing mitogenomes. Moreover, this approach is faster than traditional methods and allow a clear identification of genes, in particular for tRNAs and rRNAs.