Tissue-specific and differential editing of the two ycf3 editing sites in maize plastids

The hypothetical chloroplast open reading frame 3 (ycf3) of maize, consisting of three exons and two group II introns, contains two editing sites. Both of these sites were investigated with respect to the extent of editing in various tissues and different developmental stages. Northern blot analyses show nearly identical transcript patterns of ycf3 in all tissues investigated. In leaf plastids, both editing sites are completely edited, independent of light conditions and developmental stage. In non-leaf plastids, however, one editing site of ycf3 is only partially edited in unspliced transcripts and in one type of partially spliced transcripts. In different developmental stages of the same tissue, on the other hand, no differences in editing efficiency were found. These results indicate that, in partially spliced transcripts, different editing sites of one and the same gene can be edited with different efficiencies in a tissue-specific manner.