AL2

• Symbol: AL2
• MSU: LOC_Os09g19850
• RAPdb: Os09g0363100

• Albino Leaf 2 is involved in the splicing of chloroplast group I and II introns in rice., 2016, J Exp Bot.

Genbank accession number

• Phenotypic analysis revealed that the al2 mutation caused obvious albino leaves at the early developmental stage, eventually leading to al2 seedling death
• Electron microscopy investigations indicated that the chloroplast structure was disrupted in the al2 mutants at an early developmental stage and subsequently resulted in the breakdown of the entire chloroplast
• Molecular cloning illustrated that AL2 encodes a chloroplast group IIA intron splicing facilitator (CRS1) in rice, which was confirmed by a genetic complementation experiment
• Interestingly, we found that the expression levels of a subset of chloroplast genes that contain group IIA and IIB introns were significantly reduced in the al2 mutant compared to that in the wild type, suggesting that AL2 is a functional CRS1 in rice
• Differing from the orthologous CRS1 in maize and Arabidopsis that only regulates splicing of the chloroplast group II intron, our results demonstrated that the AL2 gene is also likely to be involved in the splicing of the chloroplast group I intron
• They also showed that disruption of AL2 results in the altered expression of chloroplast-associated genes, including chlorophyll biosynthetic genes, plastid-encoded polymerases and nuclear-encoded chloroplast genes