Multiple splicing pathways of group II trans-splicing introns in wheat mitochondria

Trans-splicing of discontinuous introns in plant mitochondria requires the assembly of independently-transcribed precursor RNAs into splicing-competent structures, and they are expected to be excised as Y-branched molecules (“broken lariats”) because these introns belong to the group II ribozyme family. We now demonstrate that this is just one of several trans-splicing pathways for wheat mitochondrial nad1 intron 4 and nad5 intron 2; they also use a hydrolytic pathway and the liberated 5′-half-intron linear molecules are unexpectedly abundant in the RNA population. We also observe a third productive splicing pathway for nad5 intron 2 that yields full-length excised introns in which the termini are joined in vivo and possess non-encoded nucleotides. In the case of trans-splicing nad1 intron 1, which has a weakly-structured and poorly-conserved core sequence, excision appears to be solely through a hydrolytic pathway. When wheat embryos are germinated in the cold rather than at room temperature, an increased complexity in trans-splicing products is seen for nad1 intron 4, suggesting that there can be environmental effects on the RNA folding of bipartite introns. Our observations provide insights into intron evolution and the complexity of RNA processing events in plant mitochondria.