Virulence evolution of a sterilizing plant virus: Tuning multiplication and resource exploitation.

ABSTRACT: Virulence evolution may have far-reaching consequences for virus epidemiology and emergence, and virologists have devoted increasing effort to understand the modulators of this process. However, still little is known on the mechanisms and determinants of virulence evolution in sterilizing viruses that, as they prevent host reproduction, may have devastating effects on host populations. Theory predicts that sterilizing parasites, including viruses, would evolve towards lower virulence and absolute host sterilization to optimize the exploitation of host resources and maximize fitness. However, this hypothesis has seldom been analyzed experimentally. We investigated the evolution of virulence of the sterilizing plant virus Turnip mosaic virus (TuMV) in its natural host Arabidopsis t

SUBMITTER: Vijayan V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5724401 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature