Functional And Evolutional Analysis Of ZmPPR41 Protein In Maize

The PPR(Pentatricopeptide repeat)proteins belong to a huge protein family in land plants.Since 2000 in which year it was identified,more and more researches reveal that PPR proteins which are encoded in nucleus play functions in RNA editing,intron splicing,RNA maturation and protein translation in mitochondria or chloroplast.With the development of related research,scientists are not satisfied with the finding of PPR proteins function.They want to detect more mechanism such as how PPR proteins recognize RNA,the interaction proteins with PPR proteins in editing or splicing process.In our study,we focus on a PPR protein,ZmPPR41,in maize.ZmPPR41 is encoded in nucleus and localized in mitochondria.This E subgroup PPR protein functions in the C-to-U editing of rpl16-48 site in mitochondria.The prediction of binding sites based on Yusuke reported show that ZmPPR41 could bind with the upstream region of rpl16-48 specifically.In the co-evolution analysis,it is possible that the evolution of PPR41's function aims to repair the mutation of rpl16-48 th editing site.Such hypothesis has been proved in the analysis of OsPPR41 function in rice.Therefore,the study of ZmPPR41 not only analyzes the single PPR protein's function,but also provides the number of database for recognize code calculation.The most important meaning of this study is that the editing event of ZmPPR41doesn't change the amino acid of rpl16.Such phenomenon provides the evidence for the hypothesis that the mutation of mitochondrial genome editing site induce the evolution of nucleus proteins in co-evolution theory.