Natural self-attenuation of pathogenic viruses by deleting the silencing suppressor coding sequence for long-term plant-virus coexistence.

ABSTRACT: Potyviridae is the largest family of plant-infecting RNA viruses. All members of the family (potyvirids) have single-stranded positive-sense RNA genomes, with polyprotein processing as the expression strategy. The 5'-proximal regions of all potyvirids, except bymoviruses, encode two types of leader proteases: the serine protease P1 and the cysteine protease HCPro. However, their arrangement and sequence composition vary greatly among genera or even species. The leader proteases play multiple important roles in different potyvirid-host combinations, including RNA silencing suppression and virus transmission. Here, we report that viruses in the genus Arepavirus, which encode two HCPro leader proteases in tandem (HCPro1-HCPro2), can naturally lose the coding sequences for these two proteins d

SUBMITTER: Qin L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12225820 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature