ABSTRACT. We sequenced and characterized the complete mitogenome of the Nepalese whiskered bat Myotis muricola (Vespertilionidae) to provide more data for comparative mitogenomics and codon usage in the genus Myotis (Vespertilionidae). The mitogenome of M. muricola is a circular molecule of 17,224 bp, consisting of a control region and a conserved set of 37 genes containing 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 22 tRNA genes, and two rRNA genes (12S rRNA and 16S rRNA). The mitogenome of M. muricola is AT-biased, with a nucleotide composition of 33.6% A, 29.7% T, 23.3% C, and 13.4% G. The total length of the 13 mitochondrial PCGs, excluding stop codons, is 11,376 bp, or 3792 amino acids. The relative synonymous codon usage (RSCU) of codons ending in A/T was generally higher than that for codons ending in G/C. The most frequently used codons are CTA(Leu) and CGA(Arg), with RSCU values greater than 2.0. The most rarely used codons, all terminating in G, are TCG(Ser), CCG(Pro), GCG(Ala), AAG(Lys), TGG(Try), CGG(Arg), and ACG(Thr), with RSCU values below 0.2. TCG(Ser) occurs only five times, and has the lowest RSCU value (0.091). These results are valuable for a better understanding of the molecular evolution of mitogenomes in the genus Myotis.

Current methods for the detection of loci affecting quantitative characters in Drosophila may be in error in two ways, (i) The detection of loci which do not exist. (ii) The magnification of the estimated effect of those major loci which do exist by accumulating to their effect those of undetected loci close to them on the chromosome. This paper considers the magnitude of the second type of error and shows that the estimates of the effect of major loci may be too high by up to five times the standard error of measurement of each cross-over chromosome examined.

ABSTRACT. We identified a partial sequence (483 bp) of the RAD51 gene from the Korean spider Callobius koreanus. Sequence variation was found at one position during alignment with the human RAD51 gene sequence. This partial sequence included the region corresponding to exon 4 in the human RAD51 gene, which encodes 39 amino acids. These results show that the RAD51 gene is highly conserved between human and spiders.