PAG-II Plant Genome II Conference

Town & Country Conference Center, San Diego, CA, January, 1994.


PG-II: SEQUENCE ANALYSIS OF THE MITOCHONDRIAL GENOME OF ARABIDOPSIS THALIANA

SEQUENCE ANALYSIS OF THE MITOCHONDRIAL GENOME OF ARABIDOPSIS THALIANA

Michael Unseld, Petra Brandt, Mathieu Klein and Axel Brennicke, Institut fur Genbiologische Forschung GmbH, IhnestraBe 63, 14195 Berlin, Germany.


The complete mitochondrial genome of the flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana has been mapped by more than 300 overlapping cosmid clones and is currently analyzed by sequencing. The hypothetical "master molecule" contains 400 kb in a circular arrangement. This arrangement contains two sets of actively recombining repeats present in inverted and in directly repeated directions. Cloned fragments of sequence arrangements across the repeats confirm the presence of all possible different arrangements in the mitochondrial DNA. Presently about 65% of the genome have been sequenced within different regions. In the sequences determined up to now about 50 genes have been identified. Genes encoded in the mitochondrial genome of Arabidopsis include informations for rRNAs, tRNAs, a number of subunits in the respiratory chain complexes, ribosomal proteins and polypeptides involved in the biogenesis of cytochrome c complexes. Some of the genes are interrupted by one or more group 11 introns. All of the protein coding genes analyzed so far in this respect are altered by RNA editing in their transcripts. Many smaller sequence repeats of coding and non-coding regions as well as several pseudogenes and chloroplast derived DNA sequences are present in the mitochondrial genome of Arabidopsis.


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