Suppression of Potyvirus Infection by a Closterovirus Protein
Authors: Dolja Valerian V. , Gal-On Amit , Gaba Victor 
Published: December 2021

The plant virus family Polyviridae is the largest and most destructive of all plant viruses. Despite the continuous effort to develop resistant plant varieties, there is a desperate need for novel approaches conferring wide-range potyvirus resistance. Based on experiments with the tobacco etch potyvirus (TEV)-derived gene expression vector, we suggested approach for screening of the candidate resistance genes. This approach relies on insertion of the genes into a virus vector and evaluation of the phenotypes of the resulting recombinant viruses. The genes which suppress infection by the recombinant virus are selected as candidates for engineering transgenic resistance. Our analysis of the TEV variants expressing proteins of the beet yellows closterovirus (BYV) revealed that one of those, the leader proteinase (L-Pro), strongly and specifically interfered with the hybrid TEV infection. Since closterovirus L-Pro is evolutionary related to potyviral helper component-proteinase (HC-Pro), we suggested that the L-Pro interfered with HC-Pro function via a trans-dominant inhibitory effect. Based on these findings, we proposed to test two major hypotheses. First, we suggested that L-Pro-mediated suppression of potyvirus infection is a general phenomenon effective against a range of potyviruses. The second hypothesis stated that the suppression effect can be reproduced in transgenic plants expressing L-Pro, and can be utilized for generation of resistance to potyviruses. In accord with these hypotheses, we developed two original objectives of our proposal: A) to determine the range of the closterovirus-derived suppression of potyviral infection, and B) to try and utilize the L-Pro-mediated suppression for the development of transgenic resistance to potyviruses. In the first phase of the project, we have developed all major tools and technologies required for successful completion of the proposed research. These included TEV and ZYMV vectors engineered to express several closteroviral L-Pro variants, and generation of the large collection of transgenic plants. To our satisfaction, characterization of the infection phenotypes exhibited by chimeric TEV and ZYMV variants confirmed our first hypothesis. For instance, similar to TEV-L- Pro(BYV) chimera, ZYMV-L-Pro(LIYV) chimera was debilitated in its systemic spread. In contrast, ZYMV-GUS chimera (positive control) was competent in establishing vigorous systemic infection. These and other results with chimeric viruses indicated that several closteroviral proteinases inhibit long-distance movement of the potyviruses upon co-expression in infected plants. In order to complete the second objective, we have generated ~90 tobacco lines transformed with closteroviral L-Pro variants, as well as ~100 lines transformed with BYV Hsp70-homolog (Hsp70h; a negative control). The presence and expression of the trans gene in each line was initially confirmed using RT-PCR and RNA preparations isolated from plants. However, since detection of the trans gene-specific RNA can not guarantee production of the corresponding protein, we have also generated L-Pro- and Hsp70h-specific antisera using corresponding synthetic peptides. These antisera allowed us to confirm that the transgenic plant lines produced detectable, although highly variable levels of the closterovirus antigens. In a final phase of the project, we tested susceptibility of the transgenic lines to TEV infection. To this end, we determined that the minimal dilution of the TEV inoculum that is still capable of infecting 100% of nontransgenic plants was 1:20, and used 10 plants per line (in total, ~2,000 plants). Unfortunately, none of the lines exhibited statistically significant reduction in susceptibility. Although discouraging, this outcome prompted us to expand our experimental plan and conduct additional experiments. Our aim was to test if closteroviral proteinases are capable of functioning in trans. We have developed agroinfection protocol for BYV, and tested if co- expression of the L-Pro is capable of rescuing corresponding null-mutant. The clear-cut, negative results of these experiments demonstrated that L-Pro acts only in cis, thus explaining the lack of resistance in our transgenic plants. We have also characterized a collection of the L-Pro alanine- scanning mutants and found direct genetic evidence of the requirement for L-Pro in virus systemic spread. To conclude, our research supported by BARD confirmed one but not another of our original hypotheses. Moreover, it provided an important insight into functional specialization of the viral proteinases and generated set of tools and data with which we will be able to address the molecular mechanisms by which these proteins provide a variety of critical functions during virus life cycle.