Does mitochondrial DNA replication in Chlamydomonas require a reverse transcriptase

Among the first green algal mitochondrial DNAs (mtDNAs) to be described in great detail was that of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii (Grant & Chiang, 1980; Gray & Boer, 1988; Vahrenholz et al., 1993). It is a ~16 kb linear molecule containing fragmented rRNA genes and telomeres, arranged in an inverted-repeat orientation with 3' single-stranded overhangs (Fig. 1A). Another intriguing feature of this genome is a free-standing open reading frame (1,119 nt) encoding a reverse transcriptase-like protein (the rtl gene), which is believed to have originated from an ancient group II intron (Boer & Gray, 1988) but is no longer associated with one.