Sequence of the wild mulberry silkmoth mitochondrial genome. Bombyx mandarina

The complete mitochondrial (mt) genome sequence of Bombyx mandarina, the probable wild ancestor of the domesticated silkmoth, was determined at the National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences, Japan. The mt genome has a gene content and order typical of insects, with a single translocation relative to the mt genome of Drosophila yakuba, which is thought to represent the gene order of the ancestral insect. Large amounts of sequence divergence between the mt genomes of B. mandarina and its domesticated relative, B. mori, suggest that the two species were genetically isolated from each other approximately 7.1 million years ago.