How do plants resist viruses?
"Anti-virus hijacking" key protein was discovered
New knowledge
Science and Technology Daily News (Reporter Wu Changfeng) The reporter learned from the University of Science and Technology of China that the team of Professor Zhao Zhong from the School of Life Sciences of the school has found the key factor of plant stem cell immune virus through the intersection of developmental biology and plant virology. -WUSCHEL (WUS) protein, revealing the broad-spectrum antiviral mechanism of plant stem cells.
The results were published in the "Science" magazine on October 9.
Plant virus disease has become the second major disease in agricultural production. Once a plant is infected with a virus, it will bring devastating consequences, ranging from reduced yields to severe harvests.
There are more than 1,000 known plant viruses, and the existing antiviral methods can only target a few viruses, and as the viruses continue to evolve, the resistance will gradually weaken.
"Stem tip detoxification" is a rare effective biotechnology, but its deep scientific mechanism has not been proven.
Zhao Zhong’s team took a different approach and took the traditional "stem tip detoxification" technology as a source of inspiration. After 8 years of painstaking research, they discovered that WUS is a key antiviral protein that exists in plant stem cells, and it is ubiquitous in lower plants to higher plants. .
This protein is induced by viral infection, and by directly inhibiting a type of methyltransferase gene, it affects the assembly of ribosomes, the main organelle of the cell involved in protein synthesis, thereby reducing the rate of protein synthesis.
This will directly cause the virus to be unable to use plant cells to complete its own protein translation, as well as the virus's replication and assembly process, thereby inhibiting the spread of the virus.
At the same time, WUS protein can also become a "weapon" for other cells to resist viruses.
The researchers examined a variety of viruses and confirmed that the WUS protein can inhibit the infection of plant cells by these viruses, indicating that the WUS protein-mediated stem cell virus immunity has a broad spectrum.
The results of this research are the first to discover such a precise molecular connection between virus resistance and meristem maintenance genes.
Peer experts commented: "This research solves a long-standing and concerned issue, and is a groundbreaking research in the field of plant pathology and plant development."