Abstract
Although many researches have been made since the RNA editing of plant mitochondria was discovered in 1989, the cis recognition elements in RNA editing, guide DNA or RNA, a trans factor (protein), and deaminase have not been decided until now.
We determined 519 RNA editing sites of 36 kinds of protein genes in tobacco mtDNA by RT-PCR method. Multiple alignments of the DNA sequences was carried out for 29 mitochondrial genes of tobacco, Arabidopsis, rapeseed and rice, and 780 RNA editing sites were marked.Consequently, the sites common to four plants had only 170 sites (22%) and 303 sites (39%) were unique to one species. From these results it was presumed that
(1) Land plant was diversified to acquire and fix the RNA editing site for each lineage.
(2) A trans-factor would recognize many RNA editing sites.
(3) A trans-factor also evolved uniquely for each lineage.
