**Conflict of interest**

**5. Conclusions**

68 Mitochondrial DNA - New Insights

opposite strands.

undetectable with usual coding rules.

AT8 in *Aleurodicus dispersus*.

In vertebrate mitochondria, BLAST analyses of peptides translated from frames that are not recognized ORFs and contain stop codons align with high homology with proteins translated from regular mitochondrial ORFs in GenBank. Many such ORFs code for peptides matching usually noncoding sequences and occur in the mitogenome of *Lepidochelys olivacea* [9]. In this case, similar analyses are done for invertebrate mitochondria and a mitochondrial genome (JX566506, from *Aleurodicus dispersus*, Yu and Du, submitted in GenBank 2012, unpublished) considered as unverified are detected, probably because many protein-coding genes are

**Figure 5.** Classical and unusual mitogenome structures of whiteflies (*Aleurodicus dugesii*; *A. dispersus*). In *A. dispersus*, GenBank annotates genes ND1, ND4l, ND4, ND5, ND6 and CytB erroneously stopless frames coding for other proteins. A different frame with stops codes for the metabolically usual protein. CytB: both frames on same strand; other genes:

Several phenomena, and their combination, explain this situation. Alignment analyses detect the coding rules for these genes: frameshift, translation of stop codons, and depletion of stop codons in usually noncoding frames. Previous analyses detected in *Lepidochelys olivacea* CytB two stop-codon-deprived frames on the sense strand, among which one codes for the regular cytochrome B, and the other for an unknown protein. GenBank annotates erroneously the latter frame as coding for cytochrome B. A similar observation is reported here for the gene

Some mitochondrial protein coding genes in *Aleurodicus dispersus* are unusual in the sense that the stop-codon-depleted frame erroneously annotated as the regular mitochondrial protein coding gene is on the strand opposite to the sense strand coding (with or without stop codons) for the actual usual protein: ND1, ND4l, ND4, ND5. The process depleting stop codons in these antisense frames is unknown and of particular interest. It is a probable combination of natural selection and enzymatically directed mutations to and from stop codons in the adequate nucleotide contexts, perhaps promoted by unknown conditions specific to *Aleurodicus dispersus*. In some genes, the protein usually coded by the regular genetic code The author declares no conflict of interest.
