The wheat mitochondrial genome contains an ORF showing sequence homology to the gene encoding the subunit 6 of the NADH-ubiquinone oxidoreductase.

A region of the mitochondrial (mt) DNA of wheat was studied because of its homology with other plant mtDNAs. Sequence analysis revealed an open reading frame encoding a polypeptide of 247 amino acids. Comparison of the sequence of the putative polypeptide with the protein sequence data of the Swiss-Prot library reveals homology with subunit 6 of the NADH-ubiquinone complex of mitochondria from Marchantia polymorpha, Podospora anserina, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and of chloroplasts from M. polymorpha and Oryza sativa. No similarity was detected when compared with the subunit 6 of animal mitochondria, probably due to the rapid evolution of the sequence. A single 1.2 kb transcript appears in northern RNA blots. We found 15 edited sites of which only 13 give amino acid changes. This is the first report of a mt nad6 gene in higher plants.