RNA Editing in Plants: Evolutionary Trends in Ferns and Lycophytes, and Development of Synthetic RNA Editing Factors

RNA editing is an essential post-transcriptional process for RNA maturation in plant organelles. C-to-U RNA editing is present in almost all land plants, but hornworts, lycophytes, and ferns also contain U-to-C RNA editing. The mechanism for U-to-C RNA editing is unknown, and is seemingly unique to these plants. The work in this thesis investigates the patterns of C-to-U and U-to-C RNA editing in the organelles of aquatic ferns and a lycophyte. Efforts to uncover the mechanism of U-to-C editing led to the design of a scalable, orthogonal methodology for building synthetic RNA editing factors for heterologous expression testing.