Yeast PPR proteins, watchdogs of mitochondrial gene expression

PPR proteins are a family of ubiquitous RNA-binding factors, found in all the Eukaryotic lineages, and are particularly numerous in higher plants. According to recent bioinformatic analyses, yeast genomes encode from 10 (in S. pombe) to 15 (in S. cerevisiae) PPR proteins. All of these proteins are mitochondrial and very often interact with the mitochondrial membrane. Apart from the general factors, RNA polymerase and RNase P, most yeast PPR proteins are involved in the stability and/or translation of mitochondrially encoded RNAs. At present, some information concerning the target RNA(s) of most of these proteins is available, the next challenge will be to refine our understanding of the function of the proteins and to resolve the yeast PPR-RNA-binding code, which might differ significantly from the plant PPR code.