522 / 2019-03-03 22:22:37

Intra-viral interactions as a strategy to expand the virus-plant interaction interface

Plant virus, plant-virus interactions, protein-protein interactions, gene expression, virulence, nucleolus

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Viruses, as intracellular parasites, need to subvert the host cell in order to guarantee viral replication and spread. Due to strict coding limitations, viruses commonly produce a reduced number of proteins; this is the case of geminiviruses, plant viruses that contain only 4-8 open reading frames in their genome, but are able to successfully infect host plants, dramatically altering plant development and physiology. In this work, we explore the idea that viral proteins may act modularly, exerting different functions individually and when in combination, physical or functional. By using the geminivirus Tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV) as a model, we show that viral proteins form complexes in the context of the viral infection. As proof-of-concept, we focus on the pair formed by C2 and CP, since the presence of CP is required and sufficient to trigger the relocalization of C2 that occurs in the presence of the virus. Our data indicate that the combination of C2 and CP results in drastic transcriptional reprogramming, both in N. benthamiana and in Arabidopsis, which go beyond the sum of the effects of the individual proteins; in agreement with C2 and CP working together to modulate transcription, mutant versions of the virus unable to produce either C2 or CP show common differences when compared to the wild type. In summary, this works shows that TYLCV proteins form an intricate network of interactions that vastly increases the complexity of the virus-host interface.