Most mitochondrial and chloroplastic proteins are synthesized in the cytosol as precursor proteins with an N-terminal targeting peptide (TP), which directs them to the correct organelle. There is also a group of proteins that are dual targeted to mitochondria and chloroplasts using an ambiguous N-terminal dual targeting peptide (dTP). The aim of this thesis was to characterize dTPs with respect to physicochemical features, sequence patterns, structural properties and interaction with the mitochondrial and chloroplastic receptors.

We have used different statistical methods, including a multivariate data analysis (MVDA) to analyse all available dTPs and compare them to organelle-specific TPs of proteome-identified mitochondrial and chloroplastic proteins from Arabidopsis thaliana. The overall amino acid sequence patterns of dTPs were intermediate between mitochondrial targeting peptides (mTPs) and chloroplastic targeting peptides (cTPs) but the greatest differences in amino acid composition were found within the very N-terminal region of dTPs, where especially arginines are highly overrepresented in relation to cTPs. Interestingly, introducing arginines to the dTPs showed clustering towards the mTPs in silico and resulted in inhibition of chloroplast import in vitro, suggesting that positive charges in the N-terminal region of TPs may function as an 'avoidance signal' for chloroplast import.

Studies with the dTP of threonyl-tRNA synthetase (ThrRS-dTP) revealed that 60 amino acids were required to confer dual targeting. The purified ThrRS-dTP(2-60) inhibited import of organelle-specific proteins, providing evidence that dual and organelle-specific proteins use the same organellar import pathways. CD spectra indicated that ThrRS-dTP(2-60) has the propensity to form a-helical structure in membrane mimetic environments. Further, NMR investigations of interaction profiles of ThrRS-dTP(2-60) with the mitochondrial Tom20 and the chloroplastic Toc34 receptor demonstrated that the mode of the recognition of a dual targeting peptide by mitochondrial and chloroplastic receptors is different. Our studies provide thorough characterization of dTPs and present for the first time dTP-organellar receptor interactions on the molecular level.