We invite for a seminar by

Dr. Michael Tillich

Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, Potsdam‑Golm, Germany.

Prof. Dr. Thomas Rattei
CUBE ‑ Division of Computational Systems Biology
Dept. of Microbiology and Ecosystem Science

The chloroplast pre‑mRNAs of land plants undergo a complex processing
procedure before achieving maturity. One of those RNA maturation steps is RNA
editing. RNA editing converts specific cytidines into uridines (also vice‑versa in some
species) whereby it usually alters codons to code for evolutionary
conserved amino acids. Often, RNA editing is essential for the production of
functional proteins. Despite intensive research during the last two decades, several
key questions concerning chloroplast RNA editing remain unanswered. For
instance, neither the editing activity has been identified nor a convincing
explanation for the evolution of this phenomenon has been presented. In order to
attempt to answer such questions, we set out to (re‑)established tobacco as
experimental system for the analysis of chloroplast editing sites and factors. For
this, we have been developing several bioinformatic approaches including an
angiosperm‑wide prediction pipeline for the target sites of editing factors. The great
advantage of tobacco is that its chloroplast chromosome can be genetically
manipulated in a directed manner. This, combined with our bioinformatic
platforms, ultimately allows the manipulation of both chloroplast editing
sites and their cognate nuclear encoded editing factors in a single experimental
system. Our bioinformatic work also sheds light on the evolution of RNA
editing in flowering plants. In addition to an outline of our work on chloroplast
RNA editing, I will present a side‑project that was aimed to investigate if the
N‑terminal Type III secretion signals of plant pathogen effectors also act as
chloroplast targeting sequences in vivo.