nMAT3 is an essential maturase splicing factor required for holo-complex I biogenesis and embryo-development in Arabidopsis thaliana plants
Group II introns are large catalytic RNAs that are particularly prevalent in the organelles of terrestrial plants. In angiosperm mitochondria, group II introns reside in the coding-regions of many critical genes, and their excision is essential for respiratory-mediated functions. Canonical group II introns are self-splicing and mobile genetic elements, consisting of the catalytic intron-RNA and its cognate intron-encoded endonuclease factor (i.e. maturase, Pfam-PF01348). Plant organellar introns are extremely degenerate, and lack many regions that are critical for splicing, including their related maturase-ORFs. The high degeneracy of plant mitochondrial introns was accompanied during evolution by the acquisition of host-acting protein cofactors. These include several nuclear encoded maturases (nMATs) and various other splicing-cofactors that belong to a diverse set of RNA-binding families, e.g. RNA helicases (Pfam-PF00910), Mitochondrial Transcription Termination Factors (mTERF, Pfam-PF02536), Plant Organelle RNA Recognition (PORR, Pfam-PF11955), and Pentatricopeptide repeat (PPR, Pfam-PF13812) proteins. Previously, we established the roles of MatR and three nuclear-maturases, nMAT1, nMAT2, and nMAT4, in the splicing of different subsets of mitochondrial introns in Arabidopsis. The function of nMAT3 (AT5G04050) was found to be essential during early embryogenesis. Using a modified embryo-rescue method, we show that nMAT3-knockout plants are strongly affected in the splicing of nad1 introns i1, i3 and i4 in Arabidopsis mitochondria. The embryo-defect phenotype is tightly associated with complex I biogenesis defects. Functional complementation of nMAT3 restored the splicing defects and altered embryogenesis phenotypes associated with the nmat3 mutant-line.