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.