Maturase K

Maturase K (matK) is a plant plastidial gene.^[1] The protein it encodes is an organelle intron maturase, a protein that splices Group II introns. It is essential for in vivo splicing of Group II introns.^[2] Amongst other maturases, this protein retains only a well conserved domain X and remnants of a reverse transcriptase domain.^[3]

Maturase K
Identifiers
Organism	Arabidopsis thaliana, plants
Symbol	matK
Alt. symbols	ycf14
Entrez	844797
RefSeq (mRNA)	NP_051040.2
UniProt	P56784
Search for Structures Swiss-model Domains InterPro

MatK/TrnK, N-terminal (inactive RT)
Identifiers
Symbol	MatK_N
Pfam	PF01824
InterPro	IPR024942
Available protein structures: Pfam   structures / ECOD   PDB RCSB PDB; PDBe; PDBj PDBsum structure summary

Location of the matK gene in the chloroplast genome of Arabidopsis thaliana. matK is one of the protein-coding genes involved in functions other than photosynthetic reactions (red boxes). matK maps at the 2–3.5 kb coordinates.

Universal matK primers can be used for DNA barcoding of angiosperms.^[4]

See also

• LtrA, an open reading frame found in the Lactococcus lactis group II introns LtrB. It is an intron-encoded protein, with three subdomains, one of which is a reverse-transcriptase/maturase.