Amplification of the complete mitochondrial genome of two protostome worms: a useful technique for comparative studies of metazoan mitochondrial DNA.

We report the first polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification of the complete mitochondrial genomes of a nemertean and a sipunculan worm in one piece using a recently published two-polymerase protocol for long and accurate DNA amplification. Successful amplification was achieved from nanogram quantities of both purified mitochondrial DNA (nemertean) and crude total DNA (sipunculan). This technique allows the rapid generation of sufficient quantities of entire mitochondrial DNAs for cloning and restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analyses, and thus will facilitate comparative studies of metazoan mitochondrial genomes.