Interrogating 1000 Insect Genomes for NUMTs: A Risk Assessment for Species Scans

The nuclear genomes of most animal species include segments of the mitogenome, but the count of these NUMTs varies greatly. This study examines the incidence of NUMTs derived from a 658 bp region of the cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) gene as a proxy for other coding regions of the mitochondrial genome. Analysis focuses on the most diverse group of terrestrial organisms, insects, because COI-based identification systems play a key role in clarifying their diversity, an essential antecedent to genome sequencing