Peptide-mediated broad-spectrum plant resistance to tospoviruses.

Abstract

Plant viruses have a significant impact on agronomic losses worldwide. A new strategy for engineering virus-resistant plants by transgenic expression of a dominant interfering peptide is presented here. This peptide of 29 aa strongly interacts with the nucleocapsid proteins (N) of different tospoviruses. Transgenic Nicotiana benthamiana lines expressing the peptide fused to a carrier protein were challenged with five different tospoviruses that have a nucleocapsid protein interacting with the peptide. In the transgenic plants, strong resistance to tomato spotted wilt virus, tomato chlorotic spot virus, groundnut ring spot virus, and chrysanthemum stem necrosis virus was observed. This therefore demonstrates the feasibility of using peptide "aptamers" as an in vivo tool to control viral infection in higher plants.

• Authors: Christoph Rudolph, Peter H Schreier, Joachim F Uhrig
• Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A) Vol. 100 Issue 8 Pg. 4429-34 (Apr 15 2003) ISSN: 0027-8424 [Print] United States
• PMID: 12682295 (Publication Type: Journal Article, Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't)

Chemical References

• Nucleocapsid Proteins
• Peptides

Topics

• Amino Acid Sequence
• Genetic Engineering
• Molecular Sequence Data
• Nucleocapsid Proteins (genetics)
• Peptides (genetics, pharmacology)
• Plant Diseases (virology)
• Plants, Genetically Modified
• Tobacco (genetics, virology)
• Tospovirus (drug effects, genetics, pathogenicity)