Yes! mites overall are cool. And certainly quite crazy mitochondrial genomes (like those split ones!)

mmmmmm tRNAs....

There is also the case of the A. vulgare mt-genome, where many tRNAs are overlapping mRNAs, and I suspect some missing ones might actually be there, overlapping... they also fix tRNAs missing large parts of the main structure 🤯. Mitochondria are crazy, tRNAs are cool... Really into tRNAs these days

I wonder how many evolved from a single ancestral tRNA locus... Not sure if there are enough mt-genomes from mites to figure it out..... I like the term mirror tRNA, sounds like from a 90's sci-fi series...

Cool. Reminds me of mite mitochondrial genomes which also have some loco tRNAs (coded in two different pieces, lacking arms) and also largely overlapping reduced ones, sometimes in the same sense. Proper annotations of many of these are missing (Maybe not too hard to figure out bioinformatically..)

Got you covered!

Can't be that intense, but trying to cover some of these often overlooked entities when talking about virus ecology and evolution (the thematic of the course) with further reading for those that want to dig deeper into these cool viruses...

Great! I have all three, thanks!