The catalytic, RNA-binding and oligomerization domains of the RNA-editing terminal uridylyl transferase 1 (RET1) from Leishmania tarentolae mitochondria were characterized by mutational analysis. Significant N-and C-terminal portions of the protein were found to be dispensable for UTP polymerization in vitro. Changes of conserved amino acids in the active site demonstrated a general similarity of sugar-phosphate moiety recognition of the incoming ribonucleotide triphosphate by RET1 and eukaryotic poly(A) polymerases. Overlapping RNA-binding and oligomerization regions were mapped to the C-terminal region, which is conserved only among trypanosomatid RET1 enzymes. In the absence of an RNA primer, RET1 can use UTP itself to initiate nucleotide transfer and produce poly(U) molecules of several hundred nucleotides. An N-terminal zinc finger motif is essential for enzyme activity; deletion of this motif or chelation of zinc inhibits activity.Transfer of a nucleotide to an acceptor hydroxyl group is a fundamental chemical reaction involved in a variety of biological processes. Among many enzyme superfamilies that perform this reaction, the DNA polymerase -type group of nucleotidyltransferases is one of most widespread. Members of this group are involved in such diverse pathways as DNA repair, RNA processing, antibiotic resistance, and signal transduction (1). They include poly(A) polymerase (PAP), 1 CCA-adding enzymes, terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase, kanamycin nucleotidyltransferase, and others. A characteristic feature of the superfamily is the presence of conserved catalytic domain with three metal-coordinating invariant carboxylates and a helical turn motif hG(G/S) 9 -13 XDh(D/E)h (where X represents any amino acid, and h is a hydrophobic amino acid) (2). Two classifications have been proposed based on sequence similarities. The class I subfamily includes the archaeal CCA-adding enzyme, eukaryotic PAP, DNA polymerase , terminal deoxynucleotidyltransferase, and kanamycin nucleotidyltransferase, whereas the class II subfamily contains eubacterial and eukaryotic CCA-adding enzymes and eubacterial PAP (3). Aravind and Koonin (1) expanded the DNA polymerase -type nucleotidyltransferase superfamily to contain several more groups of proteins and divided the enlarged set into nine families.Until recently, PAPs were the only known template-independent enzymes that exhibited specificity toward a particular nucleotide in an otherwise typical polymerization reaction. Atomic structures have been solved for yeast (4) and bovine (5) PAP, and several conserved amino acids were proposed to direct the specificity of the enzyme for ATP, albeit not by direct contacts between the nucleotide base and active center residues.Terminal uridylyltransferases (TUTases), enzymatic activities that add UMP residues to the 3Ј-hydroxyl group of RNA, have been described in mammalian cells (6 -8), plants (9), and trypanosomes (10, 11). No such activity has yet been found in prokaryotes. A biochemical analysis of protein complexes involved i...