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Lifestyles of plant viruses.

ABSTRACT: The vast majority of well-characterized eukaryotic viruses are those that cause acute or chronic infections in humans and domestic plants and animals. However, asymptomatic persistent viruses have been described in animals, and are thought to be sources for emerging acute viruses. Although not previously described in these terms, there are also many viruses of plants that maintain a persistent lifestyle. They have been largely ignored because they do not generally cause disease. The persistent viruses in plants belong to the family Partitiviridae or the genus Endornavirus. These groups also have members that infect fungi. Phylogenetic analysis of the partitivirus RNA-dependent RNA polymerase genes suggests that these viruses have been transmitted between plants and fungi. Additional families of viruses traditionally thought to be fungal viruses are also found frequently in plants, and may represent a similar scenario of persistent lifestyles, and some acute or chronic viruses of crop plants may maintain a persistent lifestyle in wild plants. Persistent, chronic and acute lifestyles of plant viruses are contrasted from both a functional and evolutionary perspective, and the potential role of these lifestyles in host evolution is discussed.

SUBMITTER: Roossinck MJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2880111 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Lifestyles of plant viruses.

Roossinck Marilyn J MJ

Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences 20100601 1548

The vast majority of well-characterized eukaryotic viruses are those that cause acute or chronic infections in humans and domestic plants and animals. However, asymptomatic persistent viruses have been described in animals, and are thought to be sources for emerging acute viruses. Although not previously described in these terms, there are also many viruses of plants that maintain a persistent lifestyle. They have been largely ignored because they do not generally cause disease. The persistent v ...[more]

PMID: 20478885

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Project description:BACKGROUND:Genomic studies demonstrate that components of virulence mechanisms in filamentous eukaryotic pathogens (FEPs, fungi and oomycetes) of plants are often highly conserved, or found in gene families that include secreted hydrolytic enzymes (e.g., cellulases and proteases) and secondary metabolites (e.g., toxins), central to the pathogenicity process. However, very few large-scale genomic comparisons have utilized complete proteomes from dozens of FEPs to reveal lifestyle-associated virulence mechanisms. Providing a powerful means for exploration, and the discovery of trends in large-scale datasets, network analysis has been used to identify core functions of the primordial cyanobacteria, and ancient evolutionary signatures in oxidoreductases. RESULTS:We used a sequence-similarity network to study components of virulence mechanisms of major pathogenic lifestyles (necrotroph (ic), N; biotroph (ic), B; hemibiotroph (ic), H) in complete pan-proteomes of 65 FEPs and 17 saprobes. Our comparative analysis highlights approximately 190 core functions found in 70% of the genomes of these pathogenic lifestyles. Core functions were found mainly in: transport (in H, N, B cores); carbohydrate metabolism, secondary metabolite synthesis, and protease (H and N cores); nucleic acid metabolism and signal transduction (B core); and amino acid metabolism (H core). Taken together, the necrotrophic core contains functions such as cell wall-associated degrading enzymes, toxin metabolism, and transport, which are likely to support their lifestyle of killing prior to feeding. The biotrophic stealth growth on living tissues is potentially controlled by a core of regulatory functions, such as: small G-protein family of GTPases, RNA modification, and cryptochrome-based light sensing. Regulatory mechanisms found in the hemibiotrophic core contain light- and CO2-sensing functions that could mediate important roles of this group, such as transition between lifestyles. CONCLUSIONS:The selected set of enriched core functions identified in our work can facilitate future studies aimed at controlling FEPs. One interesting example would be to facilitate the identification of the pathogenic potential of samples analyzed by metagenomics. Finally, our analysis offers potential evolutionary scenarios, suggesting that an early-branching saprobe (identified in previous studies) has probably evolved a necrotrophic lifestyle as illustrated by the highest number of shared gene families between saprobes and necrotrophs.

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Lifestyles of plant viruses.

Publications

Lifestyles of plant viruses.

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