An introduction to the Special Section on Crustacean Mitochondrial Genomics: Improving the assembly, annotation, and characterization of mitochondrial genomes using user-friendly and open-access bioinformatics tools, with decapod crustaceans as an example

Abstract

Abstract The special section on crustacean mitochondrial genomics houses five articles focused on the characterization of mitochondrial genomes in different decapod crustaceans. In this introductory article, I highlight details and peculiarities of the workflow used in these articles with which mitochondrial genomes were de novo assembled, annotated, manually curated, and characterized. The workflows used in these studies improves the characterization of mitochondrial genomes and are expected to democratize and advance our knowledge on mitochondrial genomics in non-model crustaceans, while profiting from user-friendly and open access bioinformatics tools.