GenBank is bursting with eukaryotic RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) results. These data are transforming our view of nuclear transcriptional architecture, but many scientists are ignoring a major component of the data: mitochondrial- and chloroplast-derived sequences. Indeed, organelle transcripts typically represent a significant proportion of the reads generated from eukaryotic RNA-Seq experiments. Here, I argue that these data are an excellent and untapped resource for investigating many aspects of organelle function and evolution.
Keywords: gene expression; mitochondrial genome; next-generation sequencing; plastid genome; transcriptomics.