Proteins localised to human mitochondria show structural element enrichment in their corresponding mRNA

Mitochondria are the energy power houses in all eukaryotic cells and are frequently implicated in mediating several diseases. The mitochondrial genome in human contains only 13 protein coding genes. However, the advancements in proteomic technologies have demonstrated that over 1000 proteins are localised to mitochondria. Although, the nuclear encoded proteins are suggested to localise in a cell using N-terminal signal peptide, only 27% of these proteins contain such localisation signals. In this study, we analysed all nuclear encoded mitochondrial proteins and report a potential alternative to peptide signal based localisation of mitochondrial proteins. We have successfully developed a computational framework to identify mRNAs with enriched structural localisation features in their 3-UTR. Using this approach, we were able to further extend the mitochondrial proteome by identifying seven new proteins that were not previously labelled to be localised to mitochondria by Uniprot but the literature supports their involvement in mitochondria-related functions.