Understanding a telomerase RNA intron sequence and structure requirement for telomerase negative regulation in Arabidopsis thaliana

TER2 is a telomeric RNA subunit in Arabidopsis thaliana that has been suggested to be working as a negative regulator of the telomerase complex. When the TER2 is over-expressed, a significant decrease in the telomerase activity has been observed in Arabidopsis. Interestingly, the TER2 gets spliced into a different form of RNA, TER2s. However, the mechanism of splicing is totally different with what we observe with the pre-mRNA in the eukaryotic cells. The intron region that is being spliced out might itself be responsible for the splicing mechanism. For this, various mutations were constructed in which certain specific sequences in the intron region were deleted. By transforming the construct back into the plants, any differences in splicing of TER2 and negative regulation on the telomerase activity will be checked