Nucleotide sequence of the unassigned reading frame urf a in the mitochondrial genome of three Schizosaccharomyces pombe strains.

Characterization of a novel open reading frame, urf a, in the mitochondrial genome of fission yeast: correlation of urf a mutations with a mitochondrial mutator phenotype and a possible role of frameshifting in urf a expression.

Between the genes for tRNA(gin) and tRNA(ile) an open reading frame of 227 amino acids has been identified which is unique among known mitochondrial genomes and which has been termed urf a (Lang et al. 1983; Kornrumpf et al. 1984). It uses the "mitochondrial" genetic code, i.e., it contains a TGA codon, whereas all other protein-encoding genes, and all but one intronic open reading frame, use the "standard" genetic code (UGG for tryptophan). A previous paper has demonstrated that "mutator" strains show an increased formation of mitochondrial drug-resistant and respiration-deficient mutants (including deletions). In this paper we show that the mutator activity is correlated with mutations in…

The mitochondrial genome of fission yeast: inability of all introns to splice autocatalytically, and construction and characterization of an intronless genome

In this paper we report the inability of four group I introns in the gene encoding subunit I of cytochrome c oxidase (cox1) and the group II intron in the apocytochrome b gene (cob) to splice autocatalytically. Furthermore we present the characterization of the first cox1 intron in the mutator strain anar-14 and the construction and characterization of strains with intronless mitochondrial genomes. We provide evidence that removal of introns at the DNA level (termed DNA splicing) is dependent on an active RNA maturase. Finally we demonstrate that the absence of introns does not abolish homologous mitochondrial recombination.