RADA-dependent branch migration has a predominant role in plant mitochondria and its defect leads to mtDNA instability and cell cycle arrest.

ABSTRACT: Mitochondria of flowering plants have large genomes whose structure and segregation are modulated by recombination activities. The post-synaptic late steps of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) recombination are still poorly characterized. Here we show that RADA, a plant ortholog of bacterial RadA/Sms, is an organellar protein that drives the major branch-migration pathway of plant mitochondria. While RadA/Sms is dispensable in bacteria, RADA-deficient Arabidopsis plants are severely impacted in their development and fertility, correlating with increased mtDNA recombination across intermediate-size repeats and accumulation of recombination-generated mitochondrial subgenomes. The radA mutation is epistatic to recG1 that affects the additional branch migration activity. In contrast, the double mutati

SUBMITTER: Chevigny N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9129000 | biostudies-literature | 2022 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature