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Genome-wide identification of conserved RNA structure in plastids

Mehta, D.; Hua, J.; Siqueira Reis, R.

2025-08-07 plant biology
10.1101/2025.08.06.668526 bioRxiv
Show abstract

The systematic discovery of functional RNA structure directly from sequence remains a central challenge in genomics. Plastid genomes, with their deep evolutionary history and extensive data availability, provide an ideal system to address this challenge. Here, we developed a stringent, covariation-based pipeline that integrates well-established and novel tools to perform an unbiased screen for conserved secondary structures across [~]14,000 plastid genomes. Our analysis identified a repertoire of 57 conserved RNA motifs. Beyond recovering known functional classes, we uncovered cis-acting novel structures within the UTRs and introns of key photosynthetic genes, including psbN, clpP, and atpF, as well as trans-acting antisense RNAs to petB and psbT, pointing to previously unknown regulatory elements. This work provides a stringent atlas of conserved plastid RNA structures, reveals an extensive layer of post-transcriptional regulation, and establishes a robust framework for structural genomics in other systems, including nuclear genomes.

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