The complete mitochondrial genome of giant cricket, Tarbinskiellus portentosus (Orthoptera: Gryllidae) and its curation

Abstract

Tarbinskiellus portentosus, commonly known as giant cricket one of the important edible cricket species. However, the genetic information of these species is still limited. Therefore, we have assembled and annotated the first mitochondrial genome of T. portentosus. The mitogenome is 15710 bp long and has GC content of 27.19%. The nucleotide composition is similar with other insect mitogenomes (A 40.6%; T 32.2%; C 17.3%; G 9.9%). The gene organization in the mitogenome of T. portentosus is identical to the mitogenome of other cricket species. The complete mitogenome of T. portentosus consisted 37 genes including 13 protein coding genes, 22 tRNA genes, and two rRNA genes. The newly assembled mitogenome will help molecular biology research on edible crickets. Since mitogenome genes are traditionally used for DNA barcoding and phylogenetic analysis, comparative analysis of T. portentosus mitogenome with other related cricket species will also aid researchers in developing universal primers for species identification toward food security. Apart from the main goal of providing full mitogenome of T. portentosus, paper also provides conceptual workflow based on de novo assembly and its correction for final mitogenome construction.

Keywords

• dna barcoding
• edible crickets
• food security
• giant cricket
• mitochondrial genome