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MatK/TrnK N-terminal Group II introns are widespread in plant cell organelles. In vivo, most plant group II introns do not self-splice, but require the assistance of proteinaceous splicing factors, known as maturases. In higher plants, maturases are encoded for in the nuclear genes, but are otherwise encoded by organellar introns. The N-terminal domain of MatK, a maturase encoded in the trnK tRNA gene intron, appears to be a divergent reverse transcriptase domain that has lost most of the conserved sequence motifs typical of functional reverse transcriptases. The function of this domain is not known, but it may be important in RNA splicing. |
Jiyao W et al.(2023). "The conserved domain database in 2023.",