Plants can 'switch off' virus DNA
Friday, August 22, 2014 - 08:31
in Biology & Nature
A team of virologists and plant geneticists at Wageningen UR has demonstrated that when tomato plants contain Ty-1 resistance to the important Tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV), parts of the virus DNA (the genome) become hyper-methylated, the result being that virus replication and transcription is inhibited. The team has also shown that this resistance has its Achilles heel: if a plant is simultaneously infected with another important (RNA) virus, the Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV), the resistance mechanism is compromised.