摘要
Even after 30 years of active research, RNA editing in plant organelles remains an enigma. Why do most plants post- transcriptionally alter hundreds or thousands of nucleotides in organellar transcripts？ How do they achieve such an effective and targeted process？ What is known is that in almost all plants, RNA editing is essential for correct synthesis of the photosynthetic and respiratory machinery in mitochondria and chloroplasts. The sites to be edited are defined by a large class of sequence-specific RNA binding proteins： pentatricopeptide repeat （PPR） proteins （Barkan and Small, 2014）. However, genetic and biochemical evidence has long suggested that other factors must be involved too. Two recent papers in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA provide exciting new evidence for protein complexes implicated in RNA editing using known mitochondrial or piastid PPR editing factors as bait in pull-down assays （Andres-Colás et al., 2017; Guillaumot et al., 2017）.
Even after 30 years of active research, RNA editing in plant organelles remains an enigma. Why do most plants post- transcriptionally alter hundreds or thousands of nucleotides in organellar transcripts？ How do they achieve such an effective and targeted process？ What is known is that in almost all plants, RNA editing is essential for correct synthesis of the photosynthetic and respiratory machinery in mitochondria and chloroplasts. The sites to be edited are defined by a large class of sequence-specific RNA binding proteins： pentatricopeptide repeat （PPR） proteins （Barkan and Small, 2014）. However, genetic and biochemical evidence has long suggested that other factors must be involved too. Two recent papers in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA provide exciting new evidence for protein complexes implicated in RNA editing using known mitochondrial or piastid PPR editing factors as bait in pull-down assays （Andres-Colás et al., 2017; Guillaumot et al., 2017）.
