A termination codon is created by RNA editing in the petunia atp9 transcript

Abstract

Analysis of the cDNA of the atp9-1 gene transcript from petunia mitochondria has revealed that ten C residues of the gene sequence are edited into U in the mRNA. Seven of these edits result in amino acid changes and one introduces a stop codon before the end of the open reading frame predicted from the gene sequence. The resulting protein is better conserved when compared to the same protein in other organisms. Comparison of the edited petunia sequence with other plant mitochondrial atp9 gene sequences idicates variation in the number and positions of edits required to obtain the same amino acids in ATP9 polypeptides of higher plants.