A chloroplast-localized PPR protein required for plastid ribosome accumulation

The pentatricopeptide repeat (PPR) is a degenerate 35-amino acid repeating motif that is found in animal, fungal, and plant proteins. The PPR protein family is particularly large in plants, where the majority of family members are predicted to be targeted to mitochondria or chloroplasts. PPR proteins are believed to fall into the larger family of helical repeat proteins, which typically bind macromolecules through a surface formed by the stacking of consecutive helical repeating units. Prior findings implicate several PPR proteins in organellar RNA metabolism, but the biological functions of few PPR proteins have been explored and in no case has a direct substrate been definitively identified. We present a characterization of the maize nuclear gene ppr2, which encodes a chloroplast PPR protein. PPR2 is found in large, heterogeneous protein complexes in the chloroplast stroma, some of which may be associated with RNA. Null ppr2 mutants have albino leaves and lack plastid rRNA and translation products. Plastid rRNAs are absent in both dark- and light-grown leaf tissues, indicating that their absence does not result from photo-oxidative damage. The population of plastid transcripts in ppr2 mutants is similar to that in other maize mutants lacking plastid ribosomes, and no ppr2-specific defects in plastid RNA metabolism have been detected. Taken together, the results suggest that ppr2 functions in the synthesis or assembly of one or more component of the plastid translation machinery.