Maslov Dmitri A
Department of Molecular, Cell and Systems Biology, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521, USA.
Pathogens. 2019 Jul 18;8(3):105. doi: 10.3390/pathogens8030105.
In the mitochondria of trypanosomes and related kinetoplastid protists, most mRNAs undergo a long and sophisticated maturation pathway before they can be productively translated by mitochondrial ribosomes. Some of the aspects of this pathway (identity of the promotors, transcription initiation, and termination signals) remain obscure, and some (post-transcriptional modification by U-insertion/deletion, RNA editing, 3'-end maturation) have been illuminated by research during the last decades. The RNA editing creates an open reading frame for a productive translation, but the fully edited mRNA often represents a minor fraction in the pool of pre-edited and partially edited precursors. Therefore, it has been expected that the final stages of the mRNA processing generate molecular hallmarks, which allow for the efficient and selective recognition of translation-competent templates. The general contours and several important details of this process have become known only recently and represent the subject of this review.
在锥虫和相关动基体原生生物的线粒体中，大多数mRNA在能够被线粒体核糖体有效翻译之前，要经历漫长而复杂的成熟途径。该途径的一些方面（启动子的身份、转录起始和终止信号）仍不清楚，而一些方面（通过U插入/缺失进行的转录后修饰、RNA编辑、3'端成熟）在过去几十年的研究中已得到阐明。RNA编辑为有效翻译创造了开放阅读框，但完全编辑的mRNA在未编辑和部分编辑的前体池中通常只占一小部分。因此，人们预期mRNA加工的最后阶段会产生分子标记，从而实现对具有翻译能力的模板进行高效且选择性的识别。这个过程的大致轮廓和几个重要细节直到最近才为人所知，也是本综述的主题。
