Background
The
Conclusion
These results suggest that a small number of the ORFs within the tobacco mitogenome may produce functional proteins and that RNA editing occurs in coding and non-coding regions of mitochondrial transcripts.
Results
The assembled transcriptome revealed distinct monocistronic and polycistronic transcripts along with large intergenic spaces with little to no detectable RNA. Eighteen of the 117 ORFs were found to have steady-state RNA amounts above background in both deep-sequencing and qRT-PCR experiments and ten of those were found to be polysome associated. In addition, the assembled transcriptome enabled a full mitogenome screen of RNA C→U editing sites. Six hundred and thirty five potential edits were found with 557 occurring within protein-coding genes, five in tRNA genes, and 73 in non-coding regions. These sites were found in every protein-coding transcript in the tobacco mitogenome.