Expanding the Search for Sperm Transmission Elements in the Mitochondrial Genomes of Bivalve Mollusks Stewart, Donald T. Garrido Ramos, Manuel Ángel Mitochondrial DNA inheritance Sperm transmission elements Bivalves DUI This research was funded by Discovery grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) to D.T.S. (grant number 217175) and S.B. (grant number 435656). E.E.C. was funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skodowska-Curie grant agreement No713750, carried out with the financial support of the Regional Council of Provence- Alpes-Cote d'Azur and with the financial support of the A*MIDEX (n degrees ANR- 11-IDEX-0001-02), funded by the Investissements d'Avenir project funded by the French Government, managed by the French National Research Agency [ANR]. B.M.R. was supported by an NSERC CGS-D award, Killam Predoctoral Scholarship, and a NS Graduate Scholarship. M.A.G.-R. was supported by a Harrison McCain Visiting Professorship Award at Acadia University from the Harrison McCain Foundation. Doubly uniparental inheritance (DUI) of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in bivalve mollusks is one of the most notable departures from the paradigm of strict maternal inheritance of mtDNA among metazoans. Recently, work on the Mediterranean mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis suggested that a nucleotide motif in the control region of this species, known as the sperm transmission element (STE), helps protect male-transmitted mitochondria from destruction during spermatogenesis. Subsequent studies found similar, yet divergent, STE motifs in other marine mussels. Here, we extend the in silico search for mtDNA signatures resembling known STEs. This search is carried out for the large unassigned regions of 157 complete mitochondrial genomes from within the Mytiloida, Veneroida, Unionoida, and Ostreoida bivalve orders. Based on a sliding window approach, we present evidence that there are additional putative STE signatures in the large unassigned regions of several marine clams and freshwater mussels with DUI. We discuss the implications of this finding for interpreting the origin of doubly uniparental inheritance in ancestral bivalve mollusks, as well as potential future in vitro and in silico studies that could further refine our understanding of the early evolution of this unusual system of mtDNA inheritance. 2021-10-06T06:45:06Z 2021-10-06T06:45:06Z 2021-08-05 info:eu-repo/semantics/article Stewart, D.T... [et al.]. Expanding the Search for Sperm Transmission Elements in the Mitochondrial Genomes of Bivalve Mollusks. Genes 2021, 12, 1211. [https://doi.org/10.3390/genes12081211] http://hdl.handle.net/10481/70661 10.3390/genes12081211 eng info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/H2020/713750 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Atribución 3.0 España MDPI