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Publication Abstract from PubMed

Chloroplasts are green plastids in the cytoplasm of eukaryotic algae and plants responsible for photosynthesis. The plastid-encoded RNA polymerase (PEP) plays an essential role during chloroplast biogenesis from proplastids and functions as the predominant RNA polymerase in mature chloroplasts. The PEP-centered transcription apparatus comprises a bacterial-origin PEP core and more than a dozen eukaryotic-origin PEP-associated proteins (PAPs) encoded in the nucleus. Here, we determined the cryo-EM structures of Nicotiana tabacum (tobacco) PEP-PAP apoenzyme and PEP-PAP transcription elongation complexes at near-atomic resolutions. Our data show the PEP core adopts a typical fold as bacterial RNAP. Fifteen PAPs bind at the periphery of the PEP core, facilitate assembling the PEP-PAP supercomplex, protect the complex from oxidation damage, and likely couple gene transcription with RNA processing. Our results report the high-resolution architecture of the chloroplast transcription apparatus and provide the structural basis for the mechanistic and functional study of transcription regulation in chloroplasts.

Cryo-EM structures of the plant plastid-encoded RNA polymerase.,Wu XX, Mu WH, Li F, Sun SY, Cui CJ, Kim C, Zhou F, Zhang Y Cell. 2024 Feb 29;187(5):1127-1144.e21. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2024.01.026. PMID:38428393^[1]

From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.