title: Mitochondrial introns: a critical view.
abstract: Although group I and group II introns were discovered more than 25 years ago, they are still difficult to identify. Modeling their RNA structure also remains particularly challenging for organelle sequences, owing to their great diversity. In fact, accelerated evolution in organelles often results in a reduced RNA structure and a loss of autocatalytic splicing and intron mobility. We set out to identify all mitochondrial group I and II introns in published sequences, and, to this end, we developed and applied a new search approach: RNAweasel. On the basis of the results, we focus here on building a comprehensive picture of mitochondrial group I introns, including a modified (reduced) consensus RNA secondary structure and a concise phylogeny-based subclassification.
authors.affiliation: Robert Cedergren Centre, Program in Evolutionary Biology, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Département de Biochimie, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada. franz.lang@umontreal.ca
authors.forename: B Franz
authors.initials: BF
authors.lastname: Lang
authors.forename: Marie-Josée
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Laforest
authors.forename: Gertraud
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Burger
mesh_terms: D001483:Base Sequence; D019295:Computational Biology; D016384:Consensus Sequence; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D005658:Fungi / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics; D007438:Introns; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D010802:Phylogeny; D012313:RNA / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000145:classification; D000077278:RNA, Mitochondrial
chemical_list: D000077278:RNA, Mitochondrial; D012313:RNA