Table 1.

Plant mTERFs molecularly characterized.

mTERF	Species	Localization	Molecular Function	Target 1	Reference
BSM/RUG2/mTERF4	Arabidopsis thaliana	C, M	Splicing of the second clpP group IIa intron	Binds non-specifically to chloroplast DNA	[26,32]
MDA1/mTERF5	Arabidopsis thaliana	C	Transcriptional pausing in the psbEFLJ chloroplast polycistron	A sequence spanning from +30 to +51 in relation to the transcription start site of psbEFLJ operon for promoter 1	[45]
			Stabilization of the 5′-end of mature psbEFLJ and ndhA mRNAs	DNA sequences located near the psbE and ndhA promoters	[7]
mTERF6	Arabidopsis thaliana	C	Maturation and promotion of transcription termination of chloroplast isoleucine transfer RNA (trnI.2)	trnI.2 dsDNA sequences; trnI.2 RNA	[33]
			rpoA polycistron transcription termination factor	3′-end sequence of the rpoA polycistron	[46]
mTERF8	Arabidopsis thaliana	C	Transcription termination of the chloroplast psbEFLJ polycistron	Downstream of the stop codon of psbJ gene near the termination site	[47]
mTERF9	Arabidopsis thaliana	C	Promotion of chloroplast ribosome assembly and translation	16S, and to a lesser extent, 23S rRNAs	[51]
mTERF15	Arabidopsis thaliana	M	Mitochondrial nad2 intron 3 splicing	Domain I of mitochondrial nad2 intron 3 transcript	[48]
Zm-mTERF4	Zea mays	C	Splicing of chloroplast group II introns	Chloroplast group II introns	[6]
ZmSMK3	Zea mays	M	Mitochondrial nad1 intron 4 and nad4 intron 1 splicing	Not determined	[38]

¹ Experimentally demonstrated by protein-nucleic acids binding assays. C: chloroplast; M: mitochondria.