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

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.