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ARS Home » Plains Area » Lincoln, Nebraska » Wheat, Sorghum and Forage Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #369804
Research Project: Improved Winter Wheat Disease Resistance and Quality through Molecular Biology, Genetics, and Breeding

Location: Wheat, Sorghum and Forage Research

Title: Fundamental aspects of plant viruses-an overview on focus issue articles

Author
item Tatineni, Satyanarayana - Ts
item Stewart, Lucy
item SANFACON, HELENE - Agriculture And Agri-Food Canada
item WANG, XIAOFENG - Virginia Tech
item NAVAS-CASTILLO, JESUS - University Of Malaga
item HAJIMORAD, REZA - University Of Tennessee

Submitted to: Phytopathology
Publication Type: Review Article
Publication Acceptance Date: 11/30/2019
Publication Date: 1/2/2020
Citation: Tatineni, S., Stewart, L.R., Sanfacon, H., Wang, X., Navas-Castillo, J., Hajimorad, R.M. 2020. Fundamental aspects of plant viruses-An overview on focus issue articles. Phytopathology. 110:6-9. https://doi.org/10.1094/PHYTO-10-19-0404-FI.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1094/PHYTO-10-19-0404-FI

Interpretive Summary: This review article provides an overview of January 2020 Phytopathology Focus Issue on advances in fundamental aspects of virus infection cycles and epidemiology. The research articles cover broad research areas on the identification of novel viruses, the development of detection methods, reverse genetics systems and functional genomics for plant viruses, vector and seed transmission studies, viral population studies, virus-virus interactions and their effect on vector transmission, and management strategies of viral diseases. The three review articles discuss recent developments in application of prokaryotic Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats/CRISPR-associated genes technology for plant virus resistance, mixed viral infections and their role in disease synergism and cross-protection, and viral transmission by whiteflies.

Technical Abstract: Viruses cause some of the most important plant diseases worldwide with significant annual yield losses to agricultural crops (Rybicki 2015). Since the first report of tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) in the late 19th century, the list of recognized plant viruses has increased rapidly, particularly since the advent of next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology. Furthermore, the development of reverse genetics systems for a growing number of plant viruses since the late 20th century has facilitated the identification of viral determinants involved in replication, movement, vector and seed transmission, host range, and pathogenicity (Hull 2014). Studies on virus-host and virus-vector interactions have helped identify host and vector proteins involved in disease development and transmission, respectively (Pallas and García 2011; Wang 2015; Whitfield et al. 2015). Virus-virus interactions in mixed infections can result in antagonistic or synergistic interactions, and mixed infections with synergistic interactions between unrelated viruses have been shown to cause economically damaging diseases (Mascia and Gallitelli 2016; Syller 2012). Based on antagonistic interactions between related viruses, cross-protection has been used to manage viral diseases (Pechinger et al. 2019). Some viral diseases are managed successfully by deployment of host resistance through breeding programs. Among several strategies employed by plants to resist virus infections, plants encode nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat dominant (R) genes and recessive resistance genes; however, viruses have evolved mechanisms to evade and counter such defenses (Hashimoto et al. 2016; Whitham and Hajimorad 2016). Significant advances in understanding how viruses overcome or evade host defense mechanisms have been made in recent years (Boualem et al. 2016; Paudel and Sanfacon 2018).