Université de Fribourg

Pentatricopeptide repeat proteins in Trypanosoma brucei function in mitochondrial ribosomes

Pusnik, Mascha ; Small, Ian ; Read, Laurie K. ; Fabbro, Thomas ; Schneider, André

In: Molecular and Cellular Biology, 2007, vol. 27, no. 19, p. 6876-6888

The pentatricopeptide repeat (PPR), a degenerate 35-amino-acid motif, defines a novel eukaryotic protein family. Plants have 400 to 500 distinct PPR proteins, whereas other eukaryotes generally have fewer than 5. The few PPR proteins that have been studied have roles in organellar gene expression, probably via direct interaction with RNA. Here we show that the parasitic protozoan Trypanosoma...