Plant viruses appear to be simple organisms with as few as four genes.
This apparent simplicity however, belies complex and fascinating interactions between viruses and their hosts. Currently we have three projects that address different aspects of plant-virus interactions. Hundreds of plant viruses have now been identified, and most of them infect only a limited number of plant species. One project in our lab examines two closely related RNA viruses that have distinct host ranges. Full length cDNA clones have been made for both viruses and RNA transcripts, the biological equivalent of viral RNA, are prepared from the clones and used to infect plants.