Turnip vein clearing virus movement protein nuclear activity: Do Tobamovirus movement proteins play a role in immune response suppression?

Abstract

Plant viruses' cell-to-cell movement requires the function of virally encoded movement proteins (MPs). The Tobamovirus, Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) has served as the model virus to study the activities of single MPs. However, since TMV does not infect the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana I have used a related Tobamovirus, Turnip vein-clearing virus (TVCV). I recently showed that, despite belonging to the same genus, the behavior of the 2 viruses MPs differ significantly during infection. Most notably, MPTVCV, but not MPTMV, targets the nucleus and induces the formation of F actin-containing filaments that associate with chromatin. Mutational analyses showed that nuclear localization of MPTVCV was necessary for TVCV local and systemic infection in both Nicotiana benthamiana and Arabidopsis. In this addendum, I propose possible targets for the MPTVCV nuclear activity, and suggest viewing MPs as viral effector-like proteins, playing a role in the inhibition of plant defense.