Institute of Experimental Botany AS CR
We are Discovering the Plant World

Muller K., Štorchová H.
PLANT MOLECULAR BIOLOGY 81: 495-505, 2013

Keywords: Transcription, Mitochondria, atp1, Silene vulgaris, crosses
Abstract: An extraordinary variation in mitochondrial DNA sequence exists in angiosperm Silene vulgaris. The atp1 gene is flanked by very variable regions, as deduced from four completely sequenced mitochondrial genomes of this species. This diversity contributed to a highly variable transcript profile of this gene observed across S. vulgaris populations. We examined the atp1 transcript in the KOV mitochondrial genome and found three 5’ ends, created most likely by the combination of transcription initiation and RNA processing. Most atp1 transcripts terminated about 70 bp upstrem of the translation stop codon, which was present in only 10% of the transcripts. Controlled crosses between a KOV mother and a geographically distant pollen donor (Krasnoyarsk, Russia) showed that nuclear background also affected atp1 transcription. The distant pollen donor introduced the factor(s) preventing the formation of a long 2100 nt-transcript, because this long atp1 transcript reappeared in the progeny from self-crosses. The highly rearranged mitochondrial genomes with a variation in gene flanking regions make Silene vulgaris an excellent model for the study of mitochondrial gene expression in plants. IEB authors: Karel Müller, Helena Štorchová