TRANSCRIPTION OF THE GENE CODING FOR SUBUNIT-9 OF ATP SYNTHASE IN RICE MITOCHONDRIA

Transcription of the single-copy rice mitochondrial atp9 gene has been analyzed. We propose that there is a 0.65 kb primary transcript that is processed to an abundant 0.45 kb mRNA; a sequence motif at the 5' t erminus of the 0.65 kb transcript shares 9 out of 11 nucleotides homol ogy to the consensus promoter proposed for maize [13]. There are sever al 3' termini based on RNase protection, and these termini map within or just distal to inverted repeats that could fold into a double stem- loop structure.