高等植物의 細胞質雄性不稔性과 미토콘드리아 DNA의 再編成

Rearrangement of mitochondrial DNA underlying the cytoplasmic male sterility in higher plants

Cytoplasmic male-sterility(CMS) is a maternally inherited trait in which plants fail to produce viable pollens, while the development of the other plant parts is not affected. The CMS trait is associated with the mitochondrial dysfunction at the stage of the meiotic division of microspore mother cells in the anthers. It has been revealed in some plants including the cms-T of maize that the CMS is caused by the novel open reading frame(ORF), a chimaeric gene, resulted from the complicated rearrangement of the mitochondrial genome. Present paper has described how the ORF is brought about and how the novel polypeptide encoded by the ORF gene acts on the mitochondria in the anther tissues leading to the degeneration of the organelles.