Dinucleotide Degradation by REXO2 Maintains Promoter Specificity in Mammalian Mitochondria (Molecular Cell)

Nicholls et al. study the function of the human oligoribonuclease REXO2 and find that it is a specialized dinucleotidase. The Rexo2 gene is essential for embryonic development, and its conditional loss results in changes to mitochondrial transcription patterns, indicating the use of dinucleotides for promoter-independent mitochondrial transcription initiation.