Department of Biology, Western University, London, ON, Canada.
Department of Genetics, "Luiz de Queiroz" College of Agriculture, University of São Paulo, Piracicaba, SP, Brazil.
Physiol Plant. 2024 Jul-Aug;176(4):e14418. doi: 10.1111/ppl.14418.
Plant organelle transcription has been studied for decades. As techniques advanced, so did the fields of mitochondrial and plastid transcriptomics. The current view is that organelle genomes are pervasively transcribed, irrespective of their size, content, structure, and taxonomic origin. However, little is known about the nature of organelle noncoding transcriptomes, including pervasively transcribed noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs). Next-generation sequencing data have uncovered small ncRNAs in the organelles of plants and other organisms, but long ncRNAs remain poorly understood. Here, we argue that publicly available third-generation long-read RNA sequencing data from plants can provide a fine-tuned picture of long ncRNAs within organelles. Indeed, given their bloated architectures, plant mitochondrial genomes are well suited for studying pervasive transcription of ncRNAs. Ultimately, we hope to showcase this new avenue of plant research while also underlining the limitations of the proposed approach.
几十年来，人们一直在研究植物细胞器转录。随着技术的进步，线粒体和质体转录组学领域也取得了进展。目前的观点是，无论细胞器基因组的大小、内容、结构和分类学起源如何，它们都广泛地被转录。然而，人们对细胞器非编码转录组的性质知之甚少，包括广泛转录的非编码 RNA（ncRNA）。下一代测序数据已经在植物和其他生物体的细胞器中发现了小 ncRNA，但长 ncRNA 仍然知之甚少。在这里，我们认为，来自植物的公开可用的第三代长读 RNA 测序数据可以提供细胞器内长 ncRNA 的精细图片。事实上，考虑到它们庞大的结构，植物线粒体基因组非常适合研究 ncRNA 的广泛转录。最终，我们希望展示这一新的植物研究途径，同时也强调所提出方法的局限性。
