Purification and sequencing of cytochrome b from potato reveals methionine cleavage of a mitochondrially encoded protein.

Several mitochondrial genes from a large number of different fungi, mammals and plants have been sequenced but little is known about the corresponding translation products. We have affinity purified cytochrome c reductase from potato mitochondria and isolated the mitochondrially encoded cytochrome b protein. Amino-terminal sequencing reveals that the polypeptide does not start with a methionine. Comparison of the amino acid sequence with the recently published sequence of the gene encoding the cytochrome b apoprotein suggests that the N-formylmethionine is removed. This result provides the first evidence for the presence of a deformylase and a methionine aminopeptidase in mitochondria.