Mitochondrial RNA Transcript Analysis Assay of Arabidopsis Leaf Tissues

Abstract

This qPCR-based assay provides an overview of the expression levels of all mitochondrial transcripts (mRNAs and rRNAs) as well as splicing efficiency in Arabidopsis. It was developed before RNAseq techniques were widely used (de Longevialle et al., 2007), but is nevertheless still useful as it is cheaper to run and the analysis is much easier and faster to perform if the aim is only to look at mitochondrial transcripts. For intron-containing mRNAs, the use of primer sets specifically amplifying spliced or unspliced forms allows the evaluation of the splicing efficiency.