Abstract
Virulence, the effect of pathogen infection on progeny production, is a major determinant of host and pathogen fitness as it affects host fecundity and pathogen transmission. In plant–virus interactions, ample evidence indicates that virulence is genetically controlled by both partners. However, the host genetic determinants are poorly understood. Through a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of 154 Arabidopsis thaliana genotypes infected by Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV), we identified eight host genes associated with virulence, most of them involved in response to biotic stresses and in cell wall biogenesis in plant reproductive structures. Given that virulence is a main determinant of the efficiency of plant virus seed transmission, we explored the link between this trait and the genetic regulation of virulence. Our results suggest that the same functions that control virulence are also important for CMV transmission through seeds. In sum, this work provides evidence of a novel role for some previously known plant defense genes and for the cell wall metabolism in plant virus interactions.
Highlights
Viruses are major plant pathogens due to the detrimental effect of their infections on the host [1]
We have recently shown that virulence is one of the main determinants of Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) and Turnip mosaic virus (TuMV) seed transmission rate in Arabidopsis thaliana [28]
We explored the phenotypic variation of V across Arabidopsis genotypes using the following general linear mixed model (GLMM): V = μ + Genotype + ε, where μ is the overall mean of the phenotypic data, “genotype” corresponds to the genetic differences among the selected Arabidopsis genotypes, and ε is the residual error term
Summary
Viruses are major plant pathogens due to the detrimental effect of their infections on the host (i.e., to their virulence) [1]. They have great impact on agronomic production worldwide, being the second most important cause of economic losses in crops only behind fungi [2] and accounting for the largest fraction of plant emerging diseases [3]. Most of the works on the “host side” addressed the question from a plant pathology perspective In this context, virulence is often defined either as the virus capacity to gain entrance to the plant or as the virus ability to induce symptoms, generally in the vegetative structures [12]. The use of the former definition of virulence led mostly to the identification of plant genes conferring resistance/immunity to virus infection, such as those related to the plant hypersensitive response, RNA silencing machinery or systemic
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