These plant organelles' purpose is to carry out life-sustaining photosynthesis. My lab is interested in understanding the mechanisms and regulatory factors that determine chloroplast development.
Chloroplasts contain their own DNA that is separate from the nucleus.
Most of the 100 or so plastid genes code for the photosynthetic complexes or gene expression components. Many of these genes contain non-coding sequences of DNA called introns, which must be spliced from coding sequences called exons. Preliminary research has shown this splicing activity to be tissue dependent for 4 plastid genes. Leaf plastids showed higher levels of splicing activity as opposed to low splicing activity in base-stem and root tissue. This suggests that splicing is a regulatory point in plastid gene expression.