Seedling Lethal1, a pentatricopeptide repeat protein lacking an E/E+ or DYW domain in Arabidopsis, is involved in plastid gene expression and early chloroplast development.

Chloroplasts are the site of photosynthesis and the biosynthesis of essential metabolites, including amino acids, fatty acids, and secondary metabolites. It is known that many seedling-lethal mutants are impaired in chloroplast function or development, indicating the development of functional chloroplast is essential for plant growth and development. Here, we isolated a novel transfer DNA insertion mutant, dubbed sel1 (for seedling lethal1), that exhibited a pigment-defective and seedling-lethal phenotype with a disrupted pentatricopeptide repeat (PPR) gene. Sequence analysis revealed that SEL1 is a member of the PLS subgroup, which is lacking known E/E(+) or DYW domains at the C terminus, in the PLS subfamily of the PPR protein family containing a putative N-terminal transit peptide and 14 putative PPR or PPR-like motifs. Confocal microscopic analysis showed that the SEL1-green fluorescent protein fusion protein is localized in chloroplasts. Transmission electron microscopic analysis revealed that the sel1 mutant is impaired in the etioplast, as well as in chloroplast development. In sel1 mutants, plastid-encoded proteins involved in photosynthesis were rarely detected due to the lack of the corresponding transcripts. Furthermore, transcript profiles of plastid genes revealed that, in sel1 mutants, the transcript levels of plastid-encoded RNA polymerase-dependent genes were greatly reduced, but those of nuclear-encoded RNA polymerase-dependent genes were increased or not changed. Additionally, the RNA editing of two editing sites of the acetyl-CoA carboxylase beta subunit gene transcripts in the sel1 mutant was compromised, though it is not directly connected with the sel1 mutant phenotype. Our results demonstrate that SEL1 is involved in the regulation of plastid gene expression required for normal chloroplast development.

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