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Plants have a sophisticated mechanism for monitoring the production of new proteins. The U1 snRNP complex ensures that the protein blueprints are fully completed. This is important because cells tend to halt the process prematurely. This type of quality control, so-called telescripting, was previously known to exist only in animal cells.

A research team led by the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) has now shown that a similar process also occurs in plants. The study was published in the journal Nature Plants.

Plant cells need proteins to function. They control all of the plant's vital processes, for example growth and metabolism. The blueprint for new proteins lies in a plant's genetic material, or more precisely in its genes.

"The information is encoded, and the genes need to be read and transcribed from DNA into RNA. Those RNA molecules are the blueprint for proteins, the step-by-step assembly instructions," explains Professor Sascha Laubinger, a plant geneticist from MLU.

In the new study, their team investigated how plants ensure that those blueprints are produced correctly. "The RNA also contains sections that are not necessary for the production of proteins. These have to be recognized and cut out in advance. This is done by a spliceosome, which also joins the relevant gene information," continues Laubinger.

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