RNA EDITING IN MITOCHONDRIA OF CULTURED TRYPANOSOMATIDS - TRANSLATABLE MESSENGER-RNAS FOR NADH-DEHYDROGENASE SUBUNITS ARE MISSING

RNA editing in mitochondria of kinetoplastid protozoa involves the pos ttranscriptional insertion and deletion of uridylate residues in prote in encoding regions of pre-mRNAs. Editing is required to remove gene-e ncoded translational defects or to convert a nonsense sequence into a sense message. In cultured trypanosomatids, however, translationally d efective pre-mRNAs for a number of NADH-dehydrogenase subunits are not converted into functional mRNAs by editing. In this report, the avail able data are discussed in the context of current models for RNA editi ng.