RNA editing is the insertion, deletion, and substitution of nucleotides in a mRNA transcript prior to translation to protein. The highly oxidative environment inside chloroplasts increases the rate of mutation so post-transcription repairs are needed to conserve functional sequences. The chloroplast editosome substitutes C -> U and U -> C at very specific locations on the transcript. This can change the codon for an amino acid or restore a non-functional pseudogene by adding an AUG start codon or removing a premature UAA stop codon.
The editosome recognizes and binds to cis sequence upstream of the editing site. The distance between the binding site and editing site  varies by gene and proteins involved in the editosome.  Hundreds of different PPR proteins from the nuclear genome are involved in the RNA editing process. These proteins consist of 35-mer repeated amino acids, the sequence of which determines the cis binding site for the edited transcript.
Basal land plants such as liverworts, mosses and ferns have hundreds of different editing sites while flowering plants typically have between thirty and forty. Parasitic plants such as Epifagus virginiana show a loss of RNA editing resulting in a loss of function for photosynthesis genes.