The complete mitochondrial genome of the Sichuan Hill Partridge (Arborophila rufipectus) and a phylogenetic analysis with related species

The complete sequence of the mitochondrial genome of the Sichuan Hill Partridge (Arborophila rufipectus) has been determined by long and accurate polymerase chain reaction (LA-PCR) and with primer walking sequence method. The genome is 16728 bp in size, containing 2 ribosomal RNA genes, 13 protein-coding genes, 22 transfer RNA (tRNA) genes and one control region, demonstrating a structure very similar to that of other phasianids. In order to investigate the phylogenetic position of Arborophila within Phasianidae, the sequences of 12 concatenated heavy-strand encoded protein coding genes were used for phylogenetic analysis employing a Bayesian inference method, Maximum parsimony (MP) analyses and Maximum likelihood (ML) analysis. With the exception of a few nodes, most internal branches were supported by high Bayesian posterior probabilities (BPP) and bootstrap probabilities (BSP). Using the 12 mitochondrial protein-coding genes sequence, we performed the likelihood tests of competing tree topologies , and also tried to estimate the divergence time within Phasianidae by the global rate minimum deformation method (GRMD), both with the previously constructed ML tree using Treefinder (Jobb, G., 2008. TREEFINDER version of February 2007. Munich(Germany).) The combined strict consensus tree demonstrated that Arborophila rufipectus possessed a basal phylogenetic position within Phasianidae. Our results also showed that the turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) had a close relationship with the gallopheasant group, which may suggest that the turkey should be classified into the Phasianidae. In addition, Phasianus was found to share a closer relationship with Lophura than Syrmaticus with robust support.