The complete mitochondrial genome of a China endemic bird, Podoces hendersoni, was sequenced using La-PCR and conserved primer walking approaches. The mtDNA seqnence is 16 867 bp in length and deposited in GenBank with accession number GU592504. The mitochondrial genomic organization of P. hendersoni is the same with that in chicken, which contains 13 protein coding genes (PCGs), 22 tRNA, 2 rRNA, and a control region. Except for COI gene, which uses GTG as the initiation codon, all other 12 PCGs of the P. hendersoni mtDNA start with the typical ATG codon. Codons TAA, AGG, and AGA were used in 11 PCGs as usual termination codons; however, the COIII and ND4 had incomplete termination codon T. The secondary structures of 20 tRNAs formed typical cloverleaf, except for tRNASer (AGY) that had an absence of the DHU arm and tRNALeu (CUN) in which anticodon-loop consisted of 9 bases, rather than the standard 7 bases. The secondary structures of rRNA were predicted. There are 4 domains, 43 helices structures in 12S rRNA, and 6 domains, 55 helices structures in 16S rRNA. Besides, F-box, D-box, C-box, B-box, Bird similarity-box and CSB1-box, which were found in the control region of other birds, also existed in the P. hendersoni.
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