School of Life Sciences, Qufu Normal University, Qufu 273165, China.
Genes (Basel). 2024 Jan 28;15(2):176. doi: 10.3390/genes15020176.
Mitochondria are important organelles that provide energy for the life of cells. Group II introns are usually found in the mitochondrial genes of land plants. Correct splicing of group II introns is critical to mitochondrial gene expression, mitochondrial biological function, and plant growth and development. Ancestral group II introns are self-splicing ribozymes that can catalyze their own removal from pre-RNAs, while group II introns in land plant mitochondria went through degenerations in RNA structures, and thus they lost the ability to self-splice. Instead, splicing of these introns in the mitochondria of land plants is promoted by nuclear- and mitochondrial-encoded proteins. Many proteins involved in mitochondrial group II intron splicing have been characterized in land plants to date. Here, we present a summary of research progress on mitochondrial group II intron splicing in land plants, with a major focus on protein splicing factors and their probable functions on the splicing of mitochondrial group II introns.
线粒体是为细胞生命提供能量的重要细胞器。内含子通常存在于陆地植物的线粒体基因中。内含子的正确剪接对于线粒体基因的表达、线粒体的生物学功能以及植物的生长发育至关重要。祖先的内含子是自我剪接的核酶，可以催化自身从前 RNA 中去除，而陆地植物线粒体中的内含子在 RNA 结构上发生了退化，因此失去了自我剪接的能力。相反，这些内含子在陆地植物线粒体中的剪接是由核编码和线粒体编码的蛋白质促进的。迄今为止，已有许多参与线粒体 II 类内含子剪接的蛋白质在陆地植物中得到了描述。在这里，我们总结了陆地植物线粒体 II 类内含子剪接的研究进展，主要集中在蛋白质剪接因子及其在线粒体 II 类内含子剪接中的可能功能上。
