Abstract
The involvement of nuclear genes in mitochondrial gene expression was investigated by identifying alterations in mitochondrial gene expression that occur when teosinte cytoplasms are introduced into certain maize inbred nuclear backgrounds. The cytoplasms from the teosintes Zea perennis, Zea diploperennis, and Zea luxurians were introduced into the maize A619 or W23 lines by recurrent backcrossing. Northern analysis revealed that the Z. perennis and Z. diploperennis mitochondrial cox2 transcript patterns were dependent upon the maize nuclear genotype. In a W23 nuclear background, these teosinte mitochondria have two major transcripts of 1.9 and 1.7 kb, whereas in an A619 background, they have three major trancripts of 1.9, 1.5 and 1.3 kb. No effect of nuclear background on cox2 transcripts was observed for plants possessing Z. luxurians cytoplasm. All teosinte-maize combinations possess larger, minor cox2 transcripts of 3.9, 3.3 and 3.0 kb; nuclear background has no effect on these transcripts. Immunoblot analysis showed a threefold reduction of the COXII polypeptide in Z. perennis-A619 combinations compared to Z. perennis-W23 combinations. All the major and minor transcripts possess both cox2 exons. The cox2 intron is missing from all the major transcripts and is present only in the 3.9- and 3.0-kb minor transcripts. The 1.7- and 1.3-kb transcripts are missing untranslated regions 3' to the cox2 gene; therefore at least some of the size heterogeneity is due to differential termination or downstream processing. Genetic analyses indicate that a single nuclear gene is responsible for the observed differences in the major cox2 transcripts, and that A619 carries the dominant allele. This gene, designated Mct, is specific for cox2, as no transcript size differences were observed for the other two mitochondrial cox genes.
Full Text
The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (3.3 MB).
Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
- Cooper P., Newton K. J. Maize nuclear background regulates the synthesis of a 22-kDa polypeptide in Zea luxurians mitochondria. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1989 Oct;86(19):7423–7426. doi: 10.1073/pnas.86.19.7423. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Darr S. C., Somerville S. C., Arntzen C. J. Monoclonal antibodies to the light-harvesting chlorophyll a/b protein complex of photosystem II. J Cell Biol. 1986 Sep;103(3):733–740. doi: 10.1083/jcb.103.3.733. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Fox T. D., Leaver C. J. The Zea mays mitochondrial gene coding cytochrome oxidase subunit II has an intervening sequence and does not contain TGA codons. Cell. 1981 Nov;26(3 Pt 1):315–323. doi: 10.1016/0092-8674(81)90200-2. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Hiesel R., Schobel W., Schuster W., Brennicke A. The cytochrome oxidase subunit I and subunit III genes in Oenothera mitochondria are transcribed from identical promoter sequences. EMBO J. 1987 Jan;6(1):29–34. doi: 10.1002/j.1460-2075.1987.tb04714.x. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Laemmli U. K. Cleavage of structural proteins during the assembly of the head of bacteriophage T4. Nature. 1970 Aug 15;227(5259):680–685. doi: 10.1038/227680a0. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Mulligan R. M., Lau G. T., Walbot V. Numerous transcription initiation sites exist for the maize mitochondrial genes for subunit 9 of the ATP synthase and subunit 3 of cytochrome oxidase. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1988 Nov;85(21):7998–8002. doi: 10.1073/pnas.85.21.7998. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Mulligan R. M., Maloney A. P., Walbot V. RNA processing and multiple transcription initiation sites result in transcript size heterogeneity in maize mitochondria. Mol Gen Genet. 1988 Mar;211(3):373–380. doi: 10.1007/BF00425688. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Nivison H. T., Hanson M. R. Identification of a mitochondrial protein associated with cytoplasmic male sterility in petunia. Plant Cell. 1989 Nov;1(11):1121–1130. doi: 10.1105/tpc.1.11.1121. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Peterson G. L. A simplification of the protein assay method of Lowry et al. which is more generally applicable. Anal Biochem. 1977 Dec;83(2):346–356. doi: 10.1016/0003-2697(77)90043-4. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Schuster W., Hiesel R., Isaac P. G., Leaver C. J., Brennicke A. Transcript termini of messenger RNAs in higher plant mitochondria. Nucleic Acids Res. 1986 Aug 11;14(15):5943–5954. doi: 10.1093/nar/14.15.5943. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Stern D. B., Newton K. J. Isolation of plant mitochondrial RNA. Methods Enzymol. 1986;118:488–496. doi: 10.1016/0076-6879(86)18095-5. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Tzagoloff A., Myers A. M. Genetics of mitochondrial biogenesis. Annu Rev Biochem. 1986;55:249–285. doi: 10.1146/annurev.bi.55.070186.001341. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]