Figure 5

Plausible pathway of the gene rearrangements found for the T. tripolitanus mitogenome based on the tandem duplication-random loss model. Mitochondrial genes are illustrated as in Figure 1 and thick horizontal bars show a unit for tandem duplication. From the typical gene arrangement (state 1), three genes were tandemly duplicated (state 2). Reassignment of a tRNA gene (R to Q) and pseudogenization of duplicate protein genes gave rise to the T. tripolitanus gene arrangement (state 3). In future, deletion of redundant genes or pseudogenes may lead to a rearranged organization shown as state 4.