Dataset Information

Can plant viruses cross the kingdom border and be pathogenic to humans?

ABSTRACT: Phytoviruses are highly prevalent in plants worldwide, including vegetables and fruits. Humans, and more generally animals, are exposed daily to these viruses, among which several are extremely stable. It is currently accepted that a strict separation exists between plant and vertebrate viruses regarding their host range and pathogenicity, and plant viruses are believed to infect only plants. Accordingly, plant viruses are not considered to present potential pathogenicity to humans and other vertebrates. Notwithstanding these beliefs, there are many examples where phytoviruses circulate and propagate in insect vectors. Several issues are raised here that question if plant viruses might further cross the kingdom barrier to cause diseases in humans. Indeed, there is close relatedness between some plant and animal viruses, and almost identical gene repertoires. Moreover, plant viruses can be detected in non-human mammals and humans samples, and there are evidence of immune responses to plant viruses in invertebrates, non-human vertebrates and humans, and of the entry of plant viruses or their genomes into non-human mammal cells and bodies after experimental exposure. Overall, the question raised here is unresolved, and several data prompt the additional extensive study of the interactions between phytoviruses and non-human mammals and humans, and the potential of these viruses to cause diseases in humans.

SUBMITTER: Balique F

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4411691 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Can plant viruses cross the kingdom border and be pathogenic to humans?

Balique Fanny F Lecoq Hervé H Raoult Didier D Colson Philippe P

Viruses 20150420 4

Phytoviruses are highly prevalent in plants worldwide, including vegetables and fruits. Humans, and more generally animals, are exposed daily to these viruses, among which several are extremely stable. It is currently accepted that a strict separation exists between plant and vertebrate viruses regarding their host range and pathogenicity, and plant viruses are believed to infect only plants. Accordingly, plant viruses are not considered to present potential pathogenicity to humans and other ver ...[more]

PMID: 25903834

Similar Datasets

Project description:Our current understanding of plant viruses stems largely from those affecting economically important plants. Yet plant species in cultivation represent a small and biased subset of the plant kingdom. Here, we describe virus diversity and abundance in 1,079 transcriptomes from species across the breadth of the plant kingdom (Archaeplastida) by analyzing open-source data from the 1000 Plant Transcriptomes Initiative (1KP). We identified 104 potentially novel viruses, of which 40% were single-stranded positive-sense RNA viruses across eight orders, including members of the Hepelivirales, Tymovirales, Cryppavirales, Martellivirales, and Picornavirales. One-third of the newly described viruses were double-stranded RNA viruses from the orders Durnavirales and Ghabrivirales. The remaining were negative-sense RNA viruses from the Rhabdoviridae, Aspiviridae, Yueviridae, and Phenuiviridae and the newly proposed Viridisbunyaviridae. Our analysis considerably expands the known host range of 13 virus families to include lower plants (e.g., Benyviridae and Secoviridae) and 4 virus families to include alga hosts (e.g., Tymoviridae and Chrysoviridae). More broadly, however, a cophylogeny analysis revealed that the evolutionary history of these families is largely driven by cross-species transmission events. The discovery of the first 30-kDa movement protein in a nonvascular plant suggests that the acquisition of plant virus movement proteins occurred prior to the emergence of the plant vascular system. Together, these data highlight that numerous RNA virus families are associated with older evolutionary plant lineages than previously thought and that the apparent scarcity of RNA viruses found in lower plants likely reflects a lack of investigation rather than their absence. IMPORTANCE Our knowledge of plant viruses is mainly limited to those infecting economically important host species. In particular, we know little about those viruses infecting basal plant lineages such as the ferns, lycophytes, bryophytes, and charophytes. To expand this understanding, we conducted a broad-scale viral survey of species across the breadth of the plant kingdom. We found that basal plants harbor a wide diversity of RNA viruses, including some that are sufficiently divergent to likely compose a new virus family. The basal plant virome revealed offers key insights into the evolutionary history of core plant virus gene modules and genome segments. More broadly, this work emphasizes that the scarcity of viruses found in these species to date most likely reflects the limited research in this area.

Dataset Information

Can plant viruses cross the kingdom border and be pathogenic to humans?

Publications

Can plant viruses cross the kingdom border and be pathogenic to humans?

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets