Abstract
Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV, Cucumovirus, Bromoviridae) is an economically significant virus infecting important horticultural and field crops. Current knowledge regarding the specific functions of its movement protein (MP) is still incomplete. In the present study, potential post-translational modification sites of its MP were assayed with mutant viruses: MP/S28A, MP/S28D, MP/S120A and MP/S120D. Ser28 was identified as an important factor in viral pathogenicity on Nicotiana tabacum cv. Xanthi, Cucumis sativus and Chenopodium murale. The subcellular localization of GFP-tagged movement proteins was determined with confocal laser-scanning microscopy. The wild type movement protein fused to green fluorescent protein (GFP) (MP-eGFP) greatly colocalized with callose at plasmodesmata, while MP/S28A-eGFP and MP/S28D-eGFP were detected as punctate spots along the cell membrane without callose colocalization. These results underline the importance of phosphorylatable amino acids in symptom formation and provide data regarding the essential factors for plasmodesmata localization of CMV MP.
Highlights
Despite the great structural diversity of plant viral movement proteins (MPs), all of them have similar primary functions and they play a crucial role in the establishment of virus infection: They are responsible for the cell-to-cell movement of the viral genome and invading the non-infected neighboring cells
Rs-Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) MP was analyzed in silico to predict feasible phosphorylation sites
During the monitoring period (30 days) no significant difference was observed in the symptom development of the wild type and the mutant viruses
Summary
Despite the great structural diversity of plant viral movement proteins (MPs), all of them have similar primary functions and they play a crucial role in the establishment of virus infection: They are (predominantly but not exclusively) responsible for the cell-to-cell movement of the viral genome and invading the non-infected neighboring cells. Several categories were defined based on the structural and functional characteristics of plant viral MPs. According to the number of encoded movement proteins, four groups can be differentiated [1]. Some members of the 30K group form tubules through plasmodesmata (PD) while others transport the viral genome by increasing the size exclusion limit (SEL) of PD, usually in the form of ribonucleoprotein complexes (RNPs) [5,6,7]
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